Israel Confirms Fate of 8 Jews Who Left Iran

JERUSALEM — Israel’s intelligence agency announced Thursday it had confirmed the murder of eight Jews who disappeared while trying to immigrate to Israel two decades ago, but it did not say where they were killed or by whom.

The eight men left Iran illegally in three groups in 1994, without travel documents and presumably relying on smugglers to help them traverse the perilous Iranian border. They, along with three other Jews who fled Iran in 1997, were never heard from again. Israeli officials decided in 2000 to push for an international campaign to trace them, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more recently asked the Mossad intelligence agency to intensify the search.

“Today, it is possible to say that the mystery has reached its end,” David Meidan, who oversaw the investigation, said in a statement released by the prime minister’s office. Mr. Meidan said Israelis had “succeeded in finding a credible source in a difficult region, who provided reliable information” about the fate of the men.

The announcement came a day after Iran and six Western powers reported that their second round of talks on the fate of Iran’s nuclear program had been “useful and substantive.” Israel, which is not a party to the talks, has been on a vigorous international lobbying campaign to expose what it calls Iran’s “true face,” offering evidence that Iran sponsors terrorism, violates human rights and aspires to build nuclear bombs.

In late September, just after Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, was warmly embraced at the United Nations, Israel announced it had recently arrested a suspected Iranian spy who had photographed, among other things, the American Embassy in Tel Aviv.

The timing of Thursday’s revelation, like the serendipitous September spy catch, seemed fortuitous. But a senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do otherwise, said the announcement regarding the eight Iranian Jews was “not connected” to this week’s nuclear talks in Vienna.

A former chief rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Amar, was briefed on the intelligence findings and ruled that the eight Iranians should be “considered deceased,” according to the statement released by the prime minister’s office, clearing the way for their wives to remarry under Jewish law.

A version of this article appears in print on March 21, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Israel Confirms Fate of 8 Jews Who Left Iran.