“I was under the harshest mental and physical torture”, he said after returning to Iran in a propaganda-heavy ceremony broadcast across Iran.
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In a video aired by Iranian state TV in 2010, Amiri said he had fled from US agents.
Amiri disappeared in Saudi Arabia in 2009 and resurfaced a year later in the USA, where he claimed to have been abducted and interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
According to the Associated Press, Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi said Amari’s sentence had been upheld by an appeals court.
US officials said at the time, though, that Amiri, an expert in radiation detection, agreed to leave Iran and was offered $5 million to provide information on his country’s nuclear development but left the United States before any payments were made. If he fled Iran voluntarily, was it to divulge the country’s nuclear secrets or, as Iran once claimed, to act as a double-agent on behalf of the Ayatollah’s regime? Then his father confirmed he had been detained to BBC Persia in 2015, but said he was anxious because he had not been able to speak to Amiri for more than a year.
Manoto, a private satellite television channel based in London believed to be run by those who back Iran’s ousted shah, first reported Saturday that Amiri had been executed. BBC Farsi also quoted Amiri’s mother saying her son’s neck bore ligature marks suggesting he had been hanged by the state.
Relations with the U.S. have improved since a deal previous year for Iran to curb its nuclear programme…
The post Nuclear scientist in Iran executed for treason appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
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“I have talked to all the major government offices, I have sent letters to everyone”, Amiri’s father said. In the USA, it appears, he got cold feet and then made his way back to Iran. They said Amiri, who ran a radiation detection program in Iran, travelled to the US and stayed there for months under his own free will. Analysts overseas suggested Iranian authorities may have threatened Amiri’s family back in Iran, forcing him to return. There he was initially hailed as a hero, but months later he was jailed.
