Iran has sentenced to death a man it implicated in the assassination of several senior nuclear scientists and accused of being a spy for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
Tehran’s prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi was quoted by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary news agency on Tuesday as saying that “the person had several meetings with (Israeli intelligence agency) Mossad and provided them with sensitive information about Iran’s military and nuclear sites in return for money and residency in Sweden,” Reuters reported.
The Iranian regime claims that at least four scientists have been assassinated between 2010 and 2012 with the aim of sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear program. In 2012, Iran hanged one man over the killings, saying he had links to Israel.
The prosecutor did not identify the person sentenced to death, but Amnesty International said on Monday that Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian doctor who was arrested while visiting Iran for a conference, was the individual in question. Djalali was arrested in April 2016 on espionage charges and held in solitary confinement for several months without any legal representation.
Although Djalali was born in Iran he is currently a resident of Sweden.
He had been found guilty by an Iranian court of passing on sensitive information about some 30 senior Iranian figures during meetings with officials from the Israeli agency. The individuals were said to be involved in research, military, and nuclear projects, including two men who were killed in bomb attacks in 2010 — nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari and physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi.
However, according to Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East advocacy director, “Djalali was sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial that once again exposes not only the Iranian authorities’ steadfast commitment to (the) use of the death penalty but their utter contempt for the rule of law.”
Djalali’s wife, Vida Mehrannia, who resides in Sweden with their two children, told the human rights organization that her husband’s physical and mental health have sharply deteriorated since he was unlawfully arrested. “We are calling for his release because he has not committed any crime,” Amnesty quoted her as saying.
The Swedish embassy in Tehran has requested consular access to Djalali but has received no word back from Iran. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship and is not likely to grant such access. Many Western dual nationals or residents are currently being held by Iran.
[Photo: Expressen TV / YouTube]