The Iranian scientist had disappeared on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 2009 before surfacing in the US.
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“I am a simple researcher who was working in the university”, Amiri said on his return to Tehran in July 2010.
According to the U.S. officials, Amiri “wanted out of Iran” but later on changed his mind. Mr. Ejehi said Mr. Amiri’s family mistakenly believed he only received a 10-year prison sentence.
An Iranian scientist who provided the United States with information about the country’s nuclear program has been hanged for treason, the government has confirmed.
US officials at the time told me and many other journalists that Amiri had defected to the United States of his own free will and had helped the USA for many years while he was in Iran by providing essential intelligence information about Iran’s nuclear program. “He provided the enemy with vital and secret information of the country”. He did not explain why authorities never announced the conviction, although he said Amiri had access to lawyers.
Amiri, who was born in 1977, went missing in 2009. He was held in a secret detention center and tried as a spy. A US official said in 2010 that Washington had received “useful information” from Amiri.
However, Iranian authorities have remained largely silent on the subject since then.
Sen. Tom Cotton, (R-Ark.) called out Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as “reckless” over email discussions that were received on her private email server about an Iranian scientist who was executed last week.
Amiri’s mother told the BBC that “the body had been handed over with rope marks around his neck”.
Nevertheless, his family says he was executed five years later and buried in Kermanshah.
Iranian officials have contended that its nuclear program was developed for nonviolent purposes. In the other, he claimed he was in the U.S.to further his education and was free and safe. -Israeli creation, disrupted thousands of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran.
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.
A USA official said in 2010 that the US received “useful information” from Amiri.
When he arrived back in Iran, he held his son, then age 7, in his arms as he faced a bank of microphones.
“I have not done any activity against my homeland”, he said. He then appeared on a number of state television programs and maintained that he was kidnapped by Central Intelligence Agency while in Saudi soil.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department declined to comment.
“He is free to go”, she said.
It is understood why Iran lied initially by saying that Amiri was not a significant figure or a nuclear scientist as he claimed, but they then said he was an intelligence officer who deceived the Americans and convinced them he was a nuclear scientist to learn what US intelligence was doing with defectors.
Analysts overseas suggested Iranian authorities may have threatened Amiri’s family back in Iran, forcing him to return.
When Iranian officials claimed that Amiri was kidnapped in Saudi Arabia, he appeared publicly in the United States and said he was there on his own accord. He also said Israeli agents were present at his interrogations and that that Central Intelligence Agency officers offered him $50 million to remain in America.
He said he had been drugged and tortured.
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Cotton said Clinton was “reckless and careless” with email information about Shahram Amiri after an aide sent it in 2010 via the private email server in her NY home.
