Conflicting accounts said he had either been abducted or had defected at a time when worldwide tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme were at their peak.
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In June 2010, a shaky online video emerged of Amiri saying he had been kidnapped by American and Saudi agents and was in Tucson, Arizona.
At first he was greeted as a hero, telling reporters as he stepped off the plane at Tehran airport that he had resisted pressure from his U.S. captors to pretend he was a defector.
He pointed to the case of Shahram Amiri who was a nuclear researcher at Malek Ashtar University of Technology working for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization before he disappeared while on Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in 2009 and resurfaced in Washington some time later. They said Mr. Amiri, who ran a radiation-detection program in Iran, travelled to the United States and stayed there for months by choice.
Those details, meant to reassure USA citizens and lawmakers, likely also snuffed out any chance of Amiri saving his life by convincing the Iranian government he was a victim of American intelligence, and not their servant. His arrest was never officially reported. Officials in Iran’s judiciary could not be reached for comment. “American intelligence services thought Iran has no knowledge of his transfer to Saudi Arabia and what he was doing but we knew all of it and were monitoring”.
But when he touched down in Iran, Amiri told a version of the events that were in stark contrast with that of USA officials.
Amiri’s case indirectly found its way back into the spotlight in the U.S. a year ago with the release of emails sent by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state.
Emails sent by Clinton’s advisers point to the scandal involving Amiri – suggesting it was a “diplomatic, psychological issue”, but not a “legal one”.
“He was sentenced to death in primary court and the sentence was confirmed by Supreme Court”, he said as quoted by ISNA news agency.
“We like all convicts to repent and reform”.
“This person who had access to the country’s secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan” Mr. Ejehi said.
On Tuesday, Iran said it had executed a number of criminals, mainly militants from the country’s Kurdish minority.
It’s the first time Iran has acknowledged that it had secretly detained, tried and convicted Shahram Amiri, a man it once heralded as a hero.
He reportedly provided information on Iran’s nuclear programme with the US.
But US officials had said Amiri was free to come and go as he pleased and that he may have returned to Iran because of pressures on his family back home.
His disappearance came as Western countries stepped up efforts to impede Iran’s nuclear program under the government of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran has always been suspected of seeking to develop nuclear weapons – an allegation it denies, saying it is pursuing civilian nuclear energy.
Between 2010 and 2012, four nuclear scientists were assassinated inside Iran and a fifth survived a bomb attack.
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The full story will likely have to wait 50-year declassification process at United States intelligence agencies.
