Iran executes British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari – report

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Iran has executed British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari after sentencing him to death on charges of spying for Britain, the country’s judicial news agency reported.

“Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death on charges of corruption on earth and extensive action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the British government’s intelligence service … was executed,” the Mizan news agency reported.

The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said on Friday that Iran must not follow through with the execution of Akbari, a former Iranian deputy defence minister.

Britain described the death sentence as politically motivated and called for his immediate release.

In an audio recording broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, Akbari said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture.

Iranian state media broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed that Akbari played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran that authorities blamed at the time on Israel.

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

Iran’s state media often airs purported confessions by suspects in politically charged cases.

Akbari, a former Iranian deputy defence minister who had lived in the UK for more than a decade, was arrested more than three years ago, but his family and the Foreign Office decided against publicising his case hoping he would be released as part of an internal appeal process.

Akbari’s wife, Maryam Akbari, told the Guardian last week that her husband was the victim of Iranian factional power politics and is a patriot.

He had been deputy defence minister under the reformist Mohammad Khatami, the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005. He was close to Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the supreme national security council, and had been an advocate for the Iran nuclear deal that was eventually signed in 2015 between the west and Tehran.

Ties between London and Tehran have deteriorated in recent months as efforts have stalled to revive the 2015 nuclear pact, to which Britain is a party.

Britain has also been critical of the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests, sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman in September.

Reuters contributed to this report