Iran: Nuclear scientist executed for spying for ‘Great Satan’ US

AN Iranian nuclear scientist who once claimed he was kidnapped by the CIA has been executed after being accused of spying for the United States.
Shahram Amiri had been in custody in Iran since 2010.
“Shahram Amiri had access to the system’s top secrets and had gotten connected with our number one enemy the Great Satan,” Iranian judicial spokesman Hojjat al-Eslam Mehdi Mohseni-Ejehei told reporters Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.
Amiri’s case had been reviewed by the Iranian high court, which upheld the conviction, according to Mohseni-Ejehei. “The Iranian High Court reviewed this decision with extreme care given the allegations of espionage,” he said.
The charge of treason in Iran could result in anything between 10 years in prison and the death penalty, Mohseni-Ejehei explained. But since the beginning of Amiri’s case, all lower courts have ruled to execute, he added, according to IRNA.
Amiri vanished in 2009 during a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Tehran accused Washington of abducting him — an accusation the U.S. denied.
A year later, videos surfaced online showing a man claiming to be the scientist. In them he denied being a defector and claimed to have been hiding out from CIA operatives in the U.S. state of Virginia.
In a subsequent video, however, he said he was living freely in Arizona.
Two weeks later, on July 14, 2010, CNN reported that Amiri had returned to Tehran after going to Iran’s interest section at the embassy of Pakistan in Washington.  He repeated his claim that he was kidnapped by American intelligence operatives.
In an interview with Iranian state-run Press TV, Amiri said he faced “psychological warfare and pressure that are much worse than being in prison.”
But U.S. officials at the time said Amiri had defected voluntarily and provided “useful information to the United States,” a claim supported by emails sent to Hilary Clinton — then Secretary of State — and released by the U.S. State Department last year.