The Tehran-based family of executed British-Iranian dual citizen Alireza Akbari have been prevented from seeing his body or burying it in the grave where he had asked to be buried in Shiraz, his birthplace, family members told the Guardian with .
Akbari was executed for espionage for M16, charges he vehemently denied and for which there is no solid evidence other than a confession extracted under torture.
In a final humiliation for the family, Akbari’s sister and daughter went to the Tehran cemetery, where officials had said he needed to be buried, to retrieve the body and bury him in the designated grave site, only to be told by officials that a man with the same name and details was buried in the cemetery Thursday and there was no body to collect.
Reports of Akbari’s execution circulated briefly on Thursday but were quickly denied. The family were told he would not be executed on Friday, a public holiday in Iran, and said they were also given false hope by the intelligence agency on Friday night that there was a chance of a reprieve, only to have one on Saturday morning Statement to wake up the justice news agency that announced he had been executed.
Negotiations then began to collect the body, but the family had to sign a statement that he would be buried silently only in a specially marked grave in Tehran Cemetery. Any attempt to take the body to Shiraz would result in it being confiscated and destroyed, the family was advised.
But on Monday the family arrived to bury Akbari at the agreed plot, only to be told by cemetery officials that a body with the exact same name and details had been buried there on Thursday. Video of the funeral was made but then taken away, officials said.
A distraught family member who does not live in Iran said: “We never saw the body. We do not know if he is in this tomb. We don’t know if he was executed on Thursday or Sunday, or if the talk of parole was just there to piss us off. Maybe even we don’t know if he’s dead or alive because we can’t access the tomb.”
Through tears, the family member said, “They’re just playing with us. It’s cruel and heartless. They tried to destroy his reputation by claiming he was a traitor and now this.”
News of Akbari’s treatment was confirmed by Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith and constituency MP for the Akbari family.
The slaughter demanded that in death, if not in life, Akbari be treated with dignity and respect. Foreign Secretary James Cleverley said in a Commons statement he was disgusted by the news, describing it as “deeply disturbing”.
He told MPs Akbari was tortured to get him to confess to espionage, saying: “He fell victim to the political vendettas of a malicious regime… [the Iranian government] does not believe in using the death penalty to silence dissenters and settle internal scores.”
He revealed that the Akbari family first contacted the Foreign Office in February last year and have received support ever since. Aside from imposing sanctions on Iran’s attorney general over the weekend, he said 40 sanctions had been imposed on the regime since October, including six people linked to the Revolutionary Courts.
He said he had already met Britain’s Ambassador to Tehran, Simon Shercliff, and promised that the steps taken so far would not limit Britain’s response.
He refused to speculate about the outlawing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the majority of MPs who interfered during his statement urged him to act.