Dawud Salahuddin converted to Islam in 1980 and killed Ali Akbar Tabatabai the same year at his home in Bethesda, Maryland; Tabatabai was an Iranian dissident and critic of Ruhollah Khomeini.
25 Facts About Dawud Salahuddin
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Dawud Salahuddin is the last person known to have seen Robert Levinson, an FBI agent who has been missing since 2007.
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Dawud Salahuddin was born David Theodore Belfield in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, on November 10,1950.
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Dawud Salahuddin grew up in Bay Shore, New York, on Long Island, in a church-going Baptist family of four boys and one girl.
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Dawud Salahuddin joined a military-type group but eventually left because it opposed his interest in Marxism.
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Dawud Salahuddin found himself at odds with the Chicago version of Islam taught by Elijah Muhammad.
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Dawud Salahuddin changed his name to Dawud Salahuddin at this time and began to visit Ernest Timothy McGhee, who had changed his name to Hamaas Abdul Khaalis.
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In 1973, when Khaalis' family was murdered Dawud Salahuddin had "a moment of clarity" and realized "that the Black Islamic leadership in America was being run by, like, the Mafia".
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Dawud Salahuddin was attracted to Islam because he thought it was "color-blind," and he converted at the age of 18.
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Dawud Salahuddin frequented an Iranian student center run by Bahram Nahidian.
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Dawud Salahuddin first worked for the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980, shortly after the Islamic Revolution as a security guard at an Iranian interest office in the Algerian Embassy in Washington DC He accepted an assignment from the Islamic government to assassinate Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a former member of the Shah's regime living in exile in Bethesda, Maryland.
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On July 22,1980, Dawud Salahuddin showed up at Tabatabai's front door in Bethesda, Maryland, dressed as a mailman and driving a borrowed postal truck, telling Tabatabai's associate he had a special delivery package that required his signature.
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When Tabatabai appeared, Dawud Salahuddin shot him three times in the abdomen and fled.
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Dawud Salahuddin made his way to Iran by way of Montreal, Canada, and Geneva, Switzerland.
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Dawud Salahuddin denies receiving any direct payments from the Iranian government besides the $5,000 he received for killing Tabatabai.
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Dawud Salahuddin arrived in Iran on July 31,1980, and has lived there most of the time, with short periods in other Muslim countries and North Korea, being careful not to expose himself to extradition back to the United States for homicide.
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Dawud Salahuddin fought the Soviets alongside the Afghan Mujahideen, and acted "in a film by one of Iran's leading directors" in 2000.
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Dawud Salahuddin married an Iranian woman, speaks Persian, and works as a freelance writer.
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Dawud Salahuddin worked as chief online editor for Press TV, an English-language international television channel funded by the Iranian government, for three years before resigning in July 2009 following the disputed presidential elections.
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Dawud Salahuddin is "close" to prominent Iranian reformists film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Masoumeh Ebtekar, the former spokeswoman for the hostage-takers at the United States Embassy in Tehran.
21.
Shortly after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, US intelligence agents established contact with Dawud Salahuddin, who "began a back-channel relationship with American authorities and talked about returning to the United States to stand trial in the murder of Tabatabai".
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Dawud Salahuddin sent a letter to US Attorney General Janet Reno dated March 5,1994, proposing mediating between the United States and "certain key figures in the worldwide Islamic movement" in return for freedom from prosecution.
23.
Dawud Salahuddin reportedly met with Robert Levinson on Iran's Kish Island in 2007, shortly before Levinson disappeared while Levinson was working on a botched CIA operation.
24.
Dawud Salahuddin is an actor and he played a starring role as a sympathetic character who aided the heroine of the 2001 film Kandahar by director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
25.
The heroine of the film did travel to Afghanistan, in an attempt to rescue her friend, and Dawud Salahuddin is an American in exile for a "political activity".