Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated

According to the Iranian news agency “IRNA”, unidentified gunmen assassinated an Iranian nuclear physicist in front of his home in eastern Tehran on Saturday. The agency quoted a police source in Tehran as confirming that he was killed in front of his home in Bani Hashim Street, and that his wife was also hit by gunshots and taken to hospital. The source added that the investigation had begun to uncover the perpetrators of the assassination who rode a motorcycle. The news agency reported that the dead man was Dr.Darwish Rezai, a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Al-Ardebili, who was preparing for a doctoral thesis in nuclear physics at Fersowsi University in the city of Mashhad Al-Maqdsa. He was born in 1965 in a village northwest of Tehran, and completed his primary and secondary education in Tehran. In 1988 he was accepted at the University of Tabriz to study applied physics, and in 1993 he completed his studies at the University of Amir Kabir, in the nuclear reactor engineering department, receiving a master’s degree in the field of neutron physics from the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization. In 1996 he became a member of the scientific research centre at the University of Al-Ardebili.