Iran executes nuclear scientist for being ‘US Spy’

After disappearing from Saudi Arabia in 2009, nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri resurfaced in the US and allegedly gave top-secret information to CIA officials. 

The Islamic Republic has executed one of its nuclear scientists on charges that he spied for the US.

As reported by BBC, “Amiri disappeared in Saudi Arabia in 2009 and resurfaced a year later in the US, where he claimed to have been abducted and interrogated by the CIA. He subsequently returned to Iran and was given a long prison sentence.”

Iran’s IRNA agency reported Sunday that Shahram Amiri was executed last week by hanging after he was said to have given the US information about the country’s nuclear program.

A spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi, stated Amiri “provided the enemy with vital information of the country.”

Amiri, an award wining physicist and a member of Iran’s nuclear agency, disappeared in 2009 while on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia

US officials revealed in 2010 that they offered to pay Amiri millions in exchange for the information. After learning that his family was being persecuted in Iran, he returned to the country without the money.

Iranian officials initially claimed that Amiri had been abducted by US agents while on the pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia. When he returned in 2010 he was greeted as a hero.

He disappeared a few months ago, and his family received his body after his execution last week.

By: Aryeh Savir, World Israel News
AP contributed to this report.

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