“Shahram Amiri was hanged for revealing the country’s top secrets to the enemy”, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie was quoted as saying by the Mizan Online news site. “By establishing contact with the U.S., Amiri gave the country’s vital information to the enemy”, Mohseni-Ejehi said.
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After seeking shelter at the Iranian affairs section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., Mr. Amiri returned to Iran that month and was welcomed by his family and Iranian officials. However, a year later he was arrested for being a spy and passing sensitive information to the United States of America, which is regarded as enemy no1 by Iran. In a video aired by Iranian state TV in 2010, Amiri said he had fled from USA agents.
Officials admitted for the first time that Shahram Amiri had been secretly detained and tried.
News about Amiri, born in 1977, had been scant since his return to Iran.
The US State Department declined to comment on the case when asked on Sunday. However, US officials in 2010 had said Amiri was given $5 million for his help in understanding the Iranian nuclear programme but he left the country without the money.
Amiri had defected to the United States, and claimed in a shaky June 2010 video that he was kidnapped by American and Saudi agents and was in Tucson, Arizona.
Iran, the US and five other world powers reached a landmark agreement past year, under which Iran will scale back its nuclear program to ensure it can not develop nuclear weapons, in exchange, the USA would lift economic sanctions on the country.
US officials told the Journal at the time that Mr. Amiri had cooperated with American intelligence agencies and shared sensitive information about Iran’s nuclear program.
In one video, Amiri said that he had been kidnapped and that Saudi and US intelligence agents held him against his will.
Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.
He surfaced in the United States a year later saying he had been kidnapped and put under “intense psychological pressure to reveal sensitive information” by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Another email, written by energy envoy Richard Morningstar and sent days earlier, portrayed Amiri as having psychological problems. However, the US says uranium particles found during an investigation previous year at an Iranian military base probably came from Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. “Our person won’t be able to do anything anyway”. He then appeared on a number of state television programs and maintained that he was kidnapped by Central Intelligence Agency while in Saudi soil.
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“The gentleman … has apparently gone to his country’s interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure”, Sullivan wrote in the email. “This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours”.
