Azerbaijanis Arrested in Turkey

A network of "Iranian spies" has been neutralized in Turkey. Turkish intelligence carried out an operation at Istanbul Airport, during which a database containing the names of around 10,000 members of the ISIS terrorist organization was seized.

The existence of this database, holding biographical information about solitary terrorists—including their skills, places of residence, and identification details—was known to many intelligence agencies, from the CIA and British MI6 to the Israeli Mossad.

The Istanbul police learned about the forthcoming exchange of the "digital burden" while wiretapping surveillance objects related to ISIS.

Members of ISIS who controlled the database agreed to sell it for $9 million to five men who were unaware of their ties to Iranian intelligence.

Among the "buyers" were two Azerbaijanis, with Seymur Rzaev—a Azerbaijani of Iranian descent—participating in a secret drone development project in Iran. Also among the arrested is Hikmet Aliyev, an Iranian citizen who manages a freight transport company between Turkey and Turkic countries.