JEDDAH: Western powers severely condemned the Iranian regime on Saturday after it executed a high-profile British-Iranian dual national, despite international warnings not to carry out the death sentence.
Alireza Akbari, 61, was hanged after being convicted of “corruption on earth and harming the country’s internal and external security by passing on intelligence.” He was sentenced to death for spying for the UK, drawing strong criticism from Western governments and international rights groups.
The regime’s Mizan website claimed Akbari, who had been arrested more than two years ago, had been a spy for Britain’s MI6 secret intelligence agency and had received around $2 million for his services.
The hanging of Ali Reza Akbari, a close ally of top security official Ali Shamkhani, suggests an ongoing power struggle within Iran’s theocracy as it tries to contain the demonstrations over the September death of Mahsa Amini.
It also harkened back to the mass purges of the military that immediately followed Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Akbari’s hanging drew immediate anger from London, which along with the US and others has sanctioned Iran over the protests and its supplying Russia with the bomb-carrying drones now targeting Ukraine.
“This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in the United Kingdom and temporarily withdrew Britain’s ambassador from Tehran as Britain also sanctioned the Islamic Republic’s prosecutor-general.
“Our response to Iran is not limited to today,” he warned.
Iran similarly summoned the British ambassador after the execution.
France’s Foreign Ministry condemned the execution “in the strongest terms” and said it cannot go “un- answered."
French President Emmanuel Macron also decried what he called “a heinous and barbaric act.” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called the execution “a further inhuman act by the Iranian regime.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned Akbari’s execution.
“We mourn with his loved ones and will continue to hold Iran accountable for its sham trials and politicized executions,” Blinken said.
Robert Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, said he was “horrified” by Akbari’s execution.
“The Islamic Republic’s unjust detentions, forced confessions, sham trials and politically motivated executions must end,” he wrote online.
News of the hanging came hours after the US had joined its ally Britain in calling for Iran not to go ahead with the execution.
US diplomat Vedant Patel said that Washington was greatly concerned by reports Akbari had been “drugged, tortured while in cus- tody, interrogated for thousands of hours and forced to make false confessions.”
Iran’s Mizan news agency, associated with the country’s judiciary, announced Akbari’s hanging without saying when it happened. However, there were rumors he had been executed days earlier.
Iran has alleged, without providing evidence, that Akbari served as a source for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6. A lengthy statement issued by Iran’s judiciary claimed Akbari received large sums of money, his British citizenship and other help in London for providing information to the intelligence service.
However, Iran long has accused those who travel abroad or have Western ties of spying, often using them as bargaining chips in negotiations.
3,500 hours of torture
Akbari, who ran a private think tank, is believed to have been arrested in 2019, but details of his case only emerged in recent weeks. Those accused of espionage and other crimes related to national security are usually tried behind closed doors, where rights groups say they do not choose their own lawyers and are not allowed to see evidence against them.
Iranian state television aired a highly edited video of Akbari discussing the allegations, footage that resembled other claimed confessions that activists have described as coerced confessions.
The BBC Farsi-language service aired an audio message from Akbari on Wednesday, in which he described being tortured.
“By using physiological and psychological methods, they broke my will, drove me to madness and forced me to do whatever they wanted,” Akbari said in the audio. “By the force of gun and death threats they made me confess to false and corrupt claims.”
“With more than 3,500 hours of torture, psychedelic drugs, and physiological and psychological pressure methods, they took away my will. They drove me to the brink of madness... and forced me to make false confessions by force of arms and death threats,” he said.
An Iranian state TV report broadcast on Saturday said the intelligence ministry had him under surveillance and arrested him in 1998. He was arrested on espionage charges again in 2008 before being freed on bail and leaving the country, it said.
Reuters could not independently verify the details.
Iran has not commented on the torture claims. However, the United Nations human rights chief has warned Iran against the “weaponization” of the death penalty as a means to put down the protests.
Top executioner
Iran is one of the world’s top executioners. However, it wasn’t immediately clear when the last time a former or current high-ranking defense official had been executed. In 1984, Iran executed its navy chief Adm. Baharam Afzali along with nine other military people on a charge of spying for the Soviet Union.
Iran’s government for months has been trying to allege — without offering evidence — that foreign countries have fomented the unrest gripping the Islamic Republic since the death of 22-year-old Amini in September after her detention by the morality police. Protesters say they are angry over the collapse of the economy, heavy-handed policing and the entrenched power of the country’s Islamic clergy.
For several years, Iran has been locked in a shadow war with the United States and Israel, marked by covert attacks on its disputed nuclear program. The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist in 2020, which Iran blamed on Israel, indicated foreign intelligence services had made major inroads. Iran mentioned that scientist in discussing Akbari’s case, though it’s unclear what current information, if any, he would have had on him.
Akbari had previously led the implementation of a 1988 cease-fire between Iran and Iraq following their devastating eight-year war, working closely with UN observers. He served as a deputy defense minister under Shamkhani during reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s administration, likely further making his credentials suspicious to hard-liners within Iran’s theocracy.
Today, Shamkhani is the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, the country’s top security body, which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei oversees. Akbari’s audio message aired by the BBC Persian included him saying he was accused of obtaining top-secret information from Shamkhani “in exchange for a bottle of perfume and a shirt.” However, it appears Shamkhani remains in his role.
The anti-government protests now shaking Iran are one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.
At least 522 protesters have been killed and 19,400 people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been monitoring the unrest. Iranian authorities have not provided official figures on deaths or arrests.
Iran has executed four people after convicting them of charges linked to the protests in similarly criticized trials, including attacks on security forces.
(With AP & Reuters)
