Tehran, Iran – Iran executed a former defense ministry employee who was convicted of spying on behalf of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the country’s judiciary said on Tuesday. It was the second such execution in the last month.
The report says that Reza Asgari was executed last week. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said Asgari had worked in the airspace department of IranMinistry of Defense and retired in 2016.
“In the last few years of his service, he joined the CIA, sold information about our missiles … to the CIA, and took money from them,” Esmaili said. “He was identified, tried and sentenced to death.”
Occasionally, Iran announces arrests and convictions of suspected spies for foreign countries, including the United States and Israel.
In June, Iran said that another suspected spy, Jalal Hajizavar, was hanged in a prison near Tehran. The report said Hajizavar, also a former defense ministry staff member, had admitted in court that he had been paid to spy on the CIA.
The report says authorities also confiscated spy equipment from his residence. He said the court sentenced Hajizavar’s wife to 15 years in prison for her role in the espionage.
Before that, in 2016, Iran executed a nuclear scientist convicted of spying for the United States.
Iranian officials also said last month that another suspected spy, Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, had been convicted of spying on the Islamic Republic of Armed Forces, “especially the Quds Force and the whereabouts and movements of the martyr General Qasem Soleimani,” who was exploited by a US attack in Iraq.
Judicial spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili he said in early June Majd had been convicted of receiving money from the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and that his execution would “take place soon,” according to a spokesman. There has been no update from the Iranian authorities on Majd’s fate.
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