Themacforums – Iran Executes British-Iranian Dual National Media Says. Alireza Akbari, a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Iran, was executed after receiving an Iranian death sentence.
On Wednesday, Mr. Akbari’s family was requested to pay him a “last visit” in the prison, and according to his wife, he had been sent to solitary confinement.
The former Iranian deputy defense minister was detained in 2019 and found guilty of spying for the UK despite his denials.
The killing, according to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, was “a brutal and cowardly crime, carried out by a barbaric administration.”
Mr. Sunak stated that the Iranian government “had no respect for the human rights of their own people” and that his sympathies were “with Alireza’s friends and family.”
James Cleverly, the UK’s foreign secretary, declared that the execution “would not go unopposed.”
The official news source for the Iranian court, Mizan, stated on Saturday that Alireza Akbari had been hung but did not provide a date for the execution.
The information was released after Iran’s intelligence ministry referred to the British-Iranian as “one of the most important agents of the British intelligence service in Iran” and after the nation earlier this week aired a video of Mr. Akbari that purported to reveal forced confessions.
However, Mr. Akbari said in an audio message that was aired on BBC Persian on Wednesday that he had been subjected to torture and compelled to confess to crimes he had not committed.
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The US had also joined calls for Iran to abstain from beheading Mr. Akbari. Vedant Patel, a US diplomat, criticized the accusations against the man as being “politically motivated” and stated that “his execution would be intolerable.”
The family of Mr. Akbari has received help from the UK Foreign Office, which has frequently brought up his case with Iranian officials. However, the Iranian government does not recognize dual nationality for Iranians, despite its urgent plea for consular access.
According to Mr. Akbari’s voice message, a senior Iranian official who was engaged in nuclear negotiations with international powers encouraged him to visit Iran a few years ago when he was abroad.
When he arrived, he continues, he was charged with buying a bottle of perfume and a shirt from Ali Samhain, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in order to gather top-secret intelligence.
Mr. Akbari claimed that he spent “more than 3,500 hours” being interrogated and tortured by intelligence operatives.
He claimed that they “broke my will, drove me insane, and forced me to do anything they wanted” by employing medical and psychological techniques. “They forced me to confess to false and corrupt claims by using the threat of death and a pistol.”
In addition, he claimed that Iran wanted to execute him “in order to exact revenge on the UK.”
For the first time, the Mizan news agency revealed that Mr. Akbari had been found guilty of spying and that the Supreme Court had rejected his appeal hours after the audio message was broadcast.
Since the UK placed sanctions on Iran’s morality police and other top security officers in reaction to the nation’s harsh crackdown on anti-government protestors, relations between the two countries have deteriorated.
In recent years, Iran has detained dozens of Iranians who have a second nationality or permanent residence abroad, most often on espionage and national security-related allegations.
Last year, after the UK paid off an old debt owed to Iran, British-Iranian citizens Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were released and permitted to leave Iran.
However, at least two other British-Iranians, including US citizen Morad Tahbaz, are still being held.
