Iran hands over death sentence to researcher over spying for Mossad

Tehran, Dec 26  : The Supreme Court of Iran has approved the death sentence on an Iranian researcher who was spying for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, Tehran Times reported on Monday.

Ahmad Reza Jalali, the convict, had admitted that he had eight meetings with Mossad's agents and that he had received money in return, Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi was quoted as saying.

Jalali had passed information to Mossad agents about projects related to the Defence Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), including information about the AEOI plants, the ministry's plans and blueprints of important buildings belonging to the ministry and the AEOI, the prosecutor said.

He had also provided Mossad with the names and information of top executives of the AEOI and the Defence Ministry, Jafari-Dolatabadi said, adding that according to Jalali's confessions, he had used flash memories to gather information from the individuals' computers.

"The aforementioned person provided (to the Mossad intelligence agency) complete and documented information about 30 top figures working on research, military, defence and nuclear projects, including the two killed, Ali Mohammadi and (Mohammad) Shahriari" in 2010, he said.

The convict was given money and was granted a Swedish citizenship for himself and his family in exchange for the information, he added.

The prosecutor also said Jalali's death sentence was upheld by Supreme Court on December 2, 2017.

Jalali, who has been in prison since April 2016, was shown on national TV earlier this month confessing to providing information to Mossad about Iranian military and nuclear scientists, including two who were assassinated in 2010, according to the report.