Iran executes man convicted of selling missile information to CIA
Iran says it has executed a former defence ministry
employee convicted of selling information to the US.
The execution of Reza Asgari took place last week,
judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters.
Mr Esmaili said that Asgari had passed on details
about Iran's missile programme to the Central Intelligence Agency after
retiring from the defence ministry's aerospace division in 2016.
He did not mention when Asgari was arrested, put on
trial or sentenced.
Mr Esmaili made the announcement while responding to
a question about convicted spy, Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd.
He has been sentenced to death for providing
intelligence to the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency on the
movements of Iranian forces in Syria.
There was no immediate comment from US officials
about Asgari's execution.
Last July, Iran's intelligence ministry said it had
arrested 17 people accused of collecting information on the country's nuclear
and military sectors for the CIA. The ministry said some had been sentenced to
death but did not name them.
US President Donald Trump dismissed that
announcement as "totally false".
The previous month, a former contractor for Iran's
defence ministry, Jalal Hajizavar, was executed after being found guilty of
espionage. Hajizavar was said to have confessed that he had been paid to spy
for the CIA.
