Iran executes former deputy defense minister for spying

Iran has executed a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defense minister, its judiciary has said, defying calls from London and Washington for his release after he was sentenced to death on charges of spying for Britain. .

Britain, which said the case against Alireza Akbari was politically motivated, condemned the execution, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling it “a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime”. Akbari, 61, was arrested in 2019.

The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported the execution without saying when it took place. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had said late on Friday that Iran should not comply with the sentence.

The execution looks set to increase pressure on Iran’s longstanding ties with the West, which have deteriorated further since talks to revive its 2015 nuclear deal reached an impasse and when Tehran unleashed a deadly crackdown on protesters in the last year.

In an audio recording purported to be from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, he said he confessed to crimes he did not commit after extensive torture.

“Alireza Akbari, sentenced to death on charges of corruption and broad action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the British government’s intelligence service, has been executed,” Mizan said.

Mizan’s report accused Akbari of receiving payments of €1,805,000, £265,000 and $50,000 for spying. Sunak said on Twitter that he was “horrified by the execution”, saying Tehran had “no respect for the human rights of its own people”.

Cleverly said in a statement that it “would not go unchallenged”, later announcing that Britain had imposed sanctions on Iran’s attorney general.

British statements on the case did not address the Iranian charge that Akbari was spying for Britain.

Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the British ambassador on Saturday over what it called “London’s meddling in Iran’s national security realm,” state news agency IRNA reported.

Iranian state media, which have portrayed Akbari as a super spy, broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed he played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in an attack outside of Tehran that authorities blamed Israel in real time.

In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the murder, but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh.

Iran’s state media often broadcast alleged confessions of suspects in politically charged cases.

Reuters was unable to establish the authenticity of state media video and audio, or when or where they were recorded.

Akbari was a close ally of Ali Shamkhani, now secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was defense minister from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy in the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

He fought during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s as a member of the Revolutionary Guard.

This marks a rare case for the Islamic Republic to execute a senior official or former official. One of the last occasions was in 1984, when Iranian navy commander Bahram Afzali was executed after being accused of spying for the Soviet Union.

France condemns execution

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires on the execution. He was “advised that Iran’s repeated violations of international law cannot go unanswered, particularly with regard to the treatment of arbitrarily detained foreigners,” a foreign ministry statement said.

Iran’s ties with the West have also been strained by its support for Russia in Ukraine, where Western states say Moscow used Iranian drones during the invasion.

Britain, which has a long history of tense ties with Iran, and other Western countries have been fiercely critical of Tehran’s crackdown on anti-government protests, sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman in September.