Iran executed a nuclear scientist convicted of spying for the United States, an official said Sunday, acknowledging for the first time that the nation secretly detained and tried a man who was once heralded as a hero.
Shahram Amiri defected to the U.S. at the height of Western efforts to
thwart Iran's nuclear program. When he returned in 2010, he was welcomed
with flowers by government leaders and even went on the Iranian
talk-show circuit. Then he mysteriously disappeared.
He was hanged the same week that Tehran executed a group of militants, a
year after Iran agreed to a landmark accord to limit uranium enrichment
in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Amiri first vanished in 2009 while on a religious pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia.
A year later, he reappeared in a series of contradictory online videos
filmed in the U.S. He then walked into the Iranian-interests section at
the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home.
In interviews, he described being kidnapped and held against his will by
Saudi and American spies. U.S. officials said he was to receive
millions of dollars for his help in understanding Iran's nuclear
program.
Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi said Amiri "had
access to the country's secret and classified information" and "had been
linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan."
The spokesman told journalists that Amiri had been tried in a
death-penalty case that was upheld by an appeals court. He did not
explain why authorities never announced the conviction, though he said
Amiri had access to lawyers.
News about Amiri, born in 1977, has been scant since his return to Iran.
Last year, his father told the BBC's Farsi-language service that his
son had been held at a secret site. Ejehi said Amiri's family mistakenly
believed he received a 10-year prison sentence.
On Tuesday, Iran announced it had executed a number of criminals,
describing them mainly as militants from the country's Kurdish minority.
Then an obituary notice for Amiri circulated in his hometown of
Kermanshah, a city 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of Tehran,
according to the Iranian pro-reform daily newspaper Shargh.
Manoto, a private satellite television channel based in London believed
to be run by those who back Iran's ousted shah, 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.
The Associated Press could not immediately reach Amiri's family.
His disappearance came as Western countries stepped up their efforts to
impede Iran's nuclear program under the government of hard-line
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The U.S. actively tried to recruit
nuclear scientists to defect. Later, four Iranian nuclear scientists
were assassinated between 2010 and 2012, and Iran blamed the slayings on
Israel and the West.
The Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli
creation, also disrupted thousands of centrifuges at a uranium
enrichment facility in Iran at the same time.
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.
A short time later, he appeared in a professionally shot online video
near a chess set, saying he wanted to earn a doctorate in America and
return to Iran if an "opportunity of safe travel" presented itself. His
wife and son remained behind in Iran.
"I have not done any activity against my homeland," he said. But soon,
another clip contradicted that, and he appeared at the Pakistani
Embassy.
Hillary Clinton, who was then the secretary of state, stressed that Amiri had been in America "of his own free will."
"He is free to go," she said.
U.S. officials at the time told the AP that Amiri was paid $5 million to
offer the CIA information about Iran's nuclear program, though he left
the country without the money. They said Amiri, who ran a
radiation-detection program in Iran, traveled to the U.S. and stayed
there for months by choice.
Analysts abroad suggested Iranian authorities may have threatened Amiri's family back in Iran, forcing him to return.
On his return from the U.S., Amiri was greeted at airport by
high-ranking government officials and was invited to TV talk shows where
he explained how he bypassed a U.S. trap to get home. Many newspapers
published accounts of his return on their front pages and some suggested
a movie be made from his story.
He said Saudi and American officials had kidnapped him while he visited
the Saudi holy city of Medina. He said Israeli agents were present at
his interrogations and that that CIA officers offered him $50 million to
remain in America.
"I was under the harshest mental and physical torture," he said.
Amiri's case indirectly found its way back into the spotlight in the
U.S. last year with the release of State Department emails sent and
received by Clinton, now the Democratic presidential candidate. The
release of those emails came amid criticism of Clinton's use of a
private account and server that has persisted into her campaign against
Republican candidate Donald Trump.
An email forwarded to Clinton by senior adviser Jake Sullivan on July 5,
2010 — just 10 days before Amiri returned to Tehran — appears to
reference the scientist.
"We have a diplomatic, 'psychological' issue, not a legal one. Our
friend has to be given a way out," the email by Richard Morningstar, a
former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read. "Our
person won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave, so be
it."
Another email, sent by Sullivan on July 12, 2010, appears to obliquely
refer to the scientist just hours before his appearance at the Pakistani
Embassy became widely known.
"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. "This could lead to
problematic news stories in the next 24 hours."
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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Associated Press Writer Amir Vahdat contributed to this report.
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