Accused of espionage, Alireza Akbari had claimed to have been forced to make “false confessions”.
by Cécile Ducourtieux (London, correspondent) and Ghazal Golshiri
Alireza Akbari, one of the former Iranian military defense officials, was executed in Iran for “espionage” on Saturday January 14. This Iranian also having British nationality was Ali Shamkhani’s deputy, Minister of Defense in the government of the Mohammad Khatami reformer between 1997 and 2001. Irano-British 61 years then served as an advisor to Mr. Shamkhani When he became secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in 2013. The news of his death sentence was only made public a few days before his hanging. In response to his execution, London announced sanctions against the Iranian attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri.
Alireza Akbari had been arrested for the first time in 2007 and released on bail. He then left Iran for the United Kingdom but was arrested in 2019, during a trip to Tehran. In a recent audio recording, broadcast before his hanging by the BBC Persian channel, he explained that he had been forced to make “confessions” by “physical and psychological tortures” and that his sentence had been dictated by the Iranian intelligence ministry. “I was subjected to 3,500 hours of interrogation and torture, and forced to take psychedelic drugs, and that destroyed my will (…). I was forced, under the threat of weapons and the threat of Death, to make false confessions, “he explains in this clandestine recording.
In a statement on January 11, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry spoke of Alireza Akbari as “one of the most important infiltrates in the Vicious British espionage service” within “Iranian sensitive and strategic centers”. In the registration disseminated by the BBC Persian, the condemned explains that the Iranian secret services seek to “take revenge” from the United Kingdom using his British nationality.
possible Political accounts
Some analysts evoke the possibility, at present at present, of a settlement of accounts between different political factions in Iran, given the proximity of Alireza Akbari with the influential Ali Shamkhani, still today secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. Sunday, January 15, the ultra -conservative daily Kayhan asked the authorities to make all the contacts of Alireza Akbari in the country public. The media close to the guardians of the Saberin News revolution was delighted with the rumor of the dismissal of Ali Shamkhani.
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