TEHRAN — Iran on Tuesday executed two men, one of them said to be a member of an exiled opposition group and the other convicted of spying for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, according to official reports.
Iran’s judiciary reported that the alleged spy, Ali-Akbar Siadat, had been hanged at Evin Prison in Tehran after being found guilty of passing on to “Iran’s enemies” information about the country’s military capability, including the missile program operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
According to the authorities, Mr. Siadat repeatedly met with Israeli agents over the course of six years, while traveling to destinations including Turkey, Thailand and the Netherlands. He was said to have received payments of $3,000 to $7,000 for each meeting. He was arrested in 2008, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The charges on which Mr. Siadat was convicted included “spreading corruption on earth,” “supporting the Zionist regime” and “opposing the Islamic republic.”
Iran periodically reports the arrest of Iranians accused of working for Israel’s intelligence services. In November 2008, Ali Ashtari, a communications and security equipment salesman, was hanged after being convicted of passing information to Israeli agents.
Earlier this year, Mr. Siadat was among 192 detainees named by opposition Web sites as political prisoners in Iran.
The second man hanged Tuesday morning was Ali Saremi, according to the statement from the judiciary. Mr. Saremi was executed after repeated convictions for supporting Mujahedeen Khalq, an exiled opposition group that the government has accused of masterminding terrorist attacks in Iran from bases in Europe and Iraq.
The group said in a statement after the execution that several members of Mr. Saremi’s family were arrested for protesting outside Evin Prison and were taken inside.
In August, Amnesty International reported that Mr. Saremi, 62, had visited a son in Mujahedeen Khalq’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq. He had been imprisoned on political charges for a total of 23 years both under the rule of the shah and since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Amnesty said.
By: William Yong (ny times magazine)
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