- Iran executed a man who he says was spying for the intelligence services of the United States and Israel, including tracing the whereabouts of the assassinated Revolutionary Guard chief Qassem Soleimani.
- State media reported that Iran executed Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, a former translator, on Monday.
- The country’s judiciary said he was a spy “for the CIA and the Mossad”, but that he was arrested long before Soleimani’s death.
- Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone attack in January, and the aftermath almost saw the war between the United States and Iran erupt.
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Iran executed a man who he says was spying for both the United States and Israel, and who spied on revered Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani before his murder in a US drone attack.
Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, a former translator, was executed on Monday, Reuters reported, citing the Iranian state news agency IRIB.
Gholamhossein Esmaili, a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, said at a press conference earlier this month that he had spied “on various security fields, especially the armed forces and the Quds Force and the whereabouts and movements of the martyr General Qasem Soleimani, “The Times of Israel reported.
“Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, one of the CIA and Mossad spies, has been sentenced to death,” he said.
And in June, the judiciary said it was “linked to the CIA and Mossad” and shared information about the country’s Revolutionary Guard, The Associated Press reported.
But he said the case against Majd was not about Soleimani’s death.
The Times of Israel noted that the judiciary said Majd was arrested in 2018, long before Soleimani was killed.
But, as Insider previously reported, Esmaili told reporters that officials had identified Majd as the culprit in Soleimani’s death, even if he was unrelated to the case against him.
An Iranian holds a photograph of Soleimani in Tehran after her murder.
Reuters
Soleimani, who led the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was killed in a US drone attack in Baghdad, Iraq, on January 3, 2020.
He was revered by many in Iran, and his murder pushed the United States and Iran close to war.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, justified the murder saying that Soleimani was an “imminent threat”. But intelligence leaks from the US in the following days suggested that the threats were exaggerated or even non-existent.
American allies like the United Kingdom and Germany criticized the attack by the United States at the time.
In early July, the UN’s chief human rights investigator said the United States violated international law by murdering him.
Iran also issued an arrest warrant against Trump in late June for the murder.
A security official told Insider earlier this month that the information the United States released could have made it easier for Iran to identify informants.
Referring to US news reports that cited inside information on how the attacks on Soleimani were carried out, he said: “If this is the type of Americans, they really tricked you into revealing all the details on how they tracked down Soleimani. How ever they learned when I was on a plane that a source had confirmed that I was definitely on the flight and had disembarked. “
