Iran executes nuclear scientist who spied for U.S.
The strange case of Shahram Amiri launched during Hillary Clinton's tenure at State.
By Nahal Toosi
08/07/16 07:53 AM EDT
The Iranian government has executed a nuclear scientist who was believed to have cooperated with U.S. intelligence but who returned to Iran after claiming he had been abducted and tortured by the CIA.
The tale of Shahram Amiri was one of the stranger sagas to emerge from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, testing her diplomatic skills in highly sensitive circumstances. His death comes just over a year after Iran and the U.S. struck a deal aimed at reining in Iran's nuclear program, a pact Clinton supports.
State-controlled Iranian media on Sunday confirmed Amiri's execution, quoting an Iranian judiciary spokesman as saying that Amiri "provided the enemy with vital information of the country." His family told the BBC his body had rope marks, indicating he had been hanged in recent days.
Amiri went missing in Saudi Arabia in May or June 2009 while on religious pilgrimage to Mecca. In the following months, Iranian officials accused the U.S. of abducting him. The State Department claimed it "had no information" on Amiri.
The Iranian resurfaced publicly on June 7, 2010 in a pair of Internet videos. In one, he claimed he'd been kidnapped by the CIA during his pilgrimage and was being held in Tucson, Arizona, where he has been subject to torture and psychological pressure. In the other, he claimed he was in the U.S. to further his education and was free and safe.
Amiri appeared in a third video posted June 29, 2010, where he said he'd escaped U.S. custody and had reached Virginia. Two weeks later, Amiri walked into the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., which houses an Iranian interests section, and said he wanted to return to Iran.
Clinton confirmed at that point that Amiri had been present in the U.S. during a news conference, saying he arrived “of his own free will and he is free to go. These are decisions that are his alone to make.”
When he did land in his native country on July 15, 2010, he was given a hero’s welcome, and Iranian officials cast him as a double agent, claiming he had infiltrated U.S. intelligence and that Iran had the upper hand in an intelligence war. But soon after returning home Amiri was taken into custody, presumably imprisoned because of his dalliance with the U.S.
The CIA and the State Department declined to comment for this story. But the U.S. was clearly embarrassed over the drama as it played out six years ago, not to mention unhappy about the public window it offered into the high-stakes spy battles between Washington and Tehran over the latter's nuclear program.
American officials at the time quickly went about trying to debunk Amiri's allegations, scoffing at claims that they had kidnapped and held Amiri against his will.
They told U.S. new organizations that Amiri had provided intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program for years from inside Iran, and that although he was not a major player in the country's nuclear apparatus his information still proved useful. They said he had been paid some $5 million for the information he provided.
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