IAEA camera memory destroyed in June attack

Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA on Friday displayed the camera system similar to those used in an Iranian centrifuge-parts workshop at Karaj at a press conference in Vienna, Austria.

He claimed that critical footage from a surveillance camera at the facility had gone missing, though acknowledging that the camera -- one of the four IAEA cameras placed at the facility -- "had been destroyed" in a sabotage attack in June.

Iran removed the cameras, along with the destroyed one, and showed them to the nuclear watchdog inspectors.

However, Grossi on Friday asked for the so-called missing memory card of the destroyed camera. “Where is it? So I'm hopeful they are going to come up with an answer because it's very strange that it disappears,” he said at the presser.

Later on Friday, Nour News, which is close to the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, quoted an informed AEOI official as explaining that the camera’s data storage device was also destroyed in the attack.

“The camera’s data storage device, wanted by the IAEA chief, has been destroyed in a sabotage operation,” the unnamed official said, adding, “The IAEA must answer why it does not use its capabilities to prevent such sabotage attacks with known origins?”

“The IAEA, in addition to its supervisory duties, has safeguarding responsibilities toward its members, and in this case, it should be held accountable for not preventing the threat against Iran's nuclear sites and not taking effective action in this regard,” the Iranian official further said.

The Zionist regime, which has assassinated at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists, is deemed to be the prime suspect in several sabotage operations that have targeted Iran's nuclear facilities over the past years.

The development came after the IAEA and Iran agreed to reinstall surveillance cameras inside the centrifuge component manufacturing workshop at the Karaj site.

ZZ/PressTV