Report : Guardian
Iran has sentenced an American citizen to death and reports have emerged that the country has started enriching uranium underground in a show of defiance of western sanctions.
The man, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an Iranian-American born in Arizona in 1983, was shown on Iranian television in December confessing to being a CIA agent, sent to gain the trust of the Iranian government by pretending to offer US state secrets. Hekmati’s father said he had gone to Iran to visit his grandmother.
The announcement on Monday of Hekmati’s death sentence came as Keyhan, a newspaper with close connections to the conservative clerical establishment, reported that Iran has started enriching uranium at the Fordow plant, a heavily fortified site dug under a mountain near the city of Qom.
Iran only acknowledged the existence of the Fordow site in September 2009, after it had been identified by western intelligence agencies. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported that Iran has recently installed centrifuges at the site, and western officials have said that the plant was ready to start functioning.
“Keyhan received reports yesterday that show Iran has begun uranium enrichment at the Fordow facility amid heightened foreign enemy threats,” the newspaper said in a front-page report.
It was not immediately clear whether the centrifuges were being used to produce 3.5% or 20% enriched uranium. The latter is of more concern to western government, as it is much closer to weapons-grade. The west suspects Iran is seeking the capacity to make nuclear weapons – a charge Tehran rejects.
The death sentence and the Fordow announcement appeared to signal Iranian defiance of western sanctions amid heightened tensions in the Gulf. US Congress has passed financial sanctions aimed at Iran’s oil trade, due to come into effect in June, and EU foreign ministers are expected to agree an embargo on imports of Iranian oil at the end of the month, which are also due to take effect after a few months’ delay.
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Another Report : Radio Zamaneh
Amir Mirzai Hekmati, the American citizen detained in Iran on the charge of spying for the U.S., has been sentenced to death by an Iranian court.
The Fars news agency reported on Monday that the former U.S. Marine of Iranian descent, Amir Mirzai Hekmati, was convicted of “collaborating with a hostile country, belonging to the CIA and trying to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism.”
The court found him guilty of being a Mohareb, an enemy of God, and spreading corruption, two court rulings that carry the death penalty in Iran.
In his defence, Mirzai said he had been deceived by the CIA and was trained by U.S. intelligence forces to infiltrate the Islamic Republic intelligence system and become a U.S. informant. He claimed: “I did not personally intend to harm Iran. I planned to live in Iran and never return to the U.S.”
Iran announced Mirzai’s arrest in December and, soon after, aired his supposed confessions on state television.
The detainee’s father, Ali Hekmati, who lives in the U.S., has announced that his son was a former Arabic translator for the Marines and has never been a CIA agent. He claims that his son had travelled to Iran to visit his grandmother and was detained by Iranian authorities sometime in September.
The U.S. government has called on Iranian authorities to give Swiss diplomats access to Hekmati in prison. In the absence of an embassy, U.S. interests in Iran are represented by the Swiss government.