by Monica Ricci Sargentini
The man had been deputy secretary of defense under Khatami. The UK and US yesterday asked for the execution to be halted. Prime Minister Sunak: “A cowardly act of a barbaric regime”.
A tweet from Mizan news agency this morning announced the umpteenth execution in Iran: “Alireza Akbari has been executed, convicted of corruption on earth and damaging the country’s internal and external security by spying for the British government.” British-Iranian dual citizen Alireza Akbari, who was Deputy Defense Minister in the late 1990s and early 2000s during the tenure of former reform President Mohamed Khatami, was arrested in 2019 on charges of receiving hundreds of thousands of euros, dollars and pounds for his espionage activities.
There was no reaction from the British government. Prime Minister Roshi Sunak called the execution “a cowardly act by a barbaric regime that disregards the human rights of its own people”. And Secretary of State James Cleverly added that Akbari’s death “will have repercussions” and that the Iranian ambassador in London will be urged “to express all his disgust at Iran’s actions”. Just yesterday, Cleverly called on Iran to stop the execution of Iran’s former deputy defense minister: “The Iranian regime should have no doubts.” A request supported by Deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel: “The allegations against Ali Reza Akbari and his execution sentence are based on political grounds. Its execution would be unthinkable. We are very concerned by reports that Mr Akbari was drugged, tortured in custody, interrogated for thousands of hours and coerced into false confessions.” According to Portal, Downing Street is now seriously considering the possibility of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards being considered a terrorist organisation. Relations between Tehran and London have been deteriorating for some time precisely because of the arrest of several people with dual citizenship.Since early December, Iran has hanged four people accused of leaking information to the Israeli intelligence service.
The Confessions
Evidence presented by the regime includes an edited video in which Akbari admits to being a spy, but last Wednesday the Persian BBC aired a recording in which the alleged former Iranian deputy minister says he has confessed to crimes he have not committed torture for a long time. «More than 3,500 hours of beatings, psychedelic drugs and physiological and psychological pressure methods have robbed me of my will. They drove me to the brink of insanity and made false confessions at gunpoint and death threats,” he said.
The murder of the nuclear scientist
Iranian media on Thursday aired a video they said Akbari had played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in an attack outside Tehran in 2020. In the video, Akbari did not admit involvement in the assassination but said a British agent asked him for information about Fachrizadeh. According to prosecutors, this would have led to the assassination of the scientist, which Tehran believes was an Israeli order.
Akbari was a deputy to former Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani and was his adviser during his tenure as Navy commander. Shamkhani is currently Secretary-General of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), in whose secretariat Akbari held a post.
For months, the Iranian government has been trying – without providing evidence – to support some foreign countries fomenting the unrest that is ravaging the Islamic Republic following the death in September of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by vice squads for wearing an inappropriate veil and then killed.
January 14, 2023 (change January 14, 2023 | 18:42)
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