TEHRAN: Iranian authorities on Sunday said it had executed a nuclear scientist who defected to the US in 2009 and returned to the Islamic Republic under mysterious circumstances a year later, acknowledging for the first time they had secretly detained, tried and convicted a man once heralded as a hero.
Shahram Amiri vanished in 2009 while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, only to reappear a year later in a series of online videos filmed in the US. He then walked into the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home.
In interviews, Amiri described being kidnapped and held against his will by Saudi and American spies, while US officials said he was to receive millions of dollars for his help in understanding Iran’s contested nuclear programme.
Amiri was hanged the same week as Tehran executed a group of militants, a year after his country agreed to a landmark pact to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi on Sunday said Amiri was convicted of spying as he “provided the enemy with vital information of the country”.
Amiri had access to classified information “and he was linked to our hostile and number one enemy, or the Great Satan,” Ejehi said, referring to the US.
{{/usCountry}}Amiri had access to classified information “and he was linked to our hostile and number one enemy, or the Great Satan,” Ejehi said, referring to the US.
{{/usCountry}}“He neither repented nor compensated and he was trying to leak some information from inside prison, too.” Ejehi said.