A total of ten people were found guilty of working for Israeli intelligence, Iranian state media has said
FILE PHOTO. © Global Look Press / Maksim Konstantinov
Four people linked to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad have been sentenced to death and were hanged on Friday in Iran, local state media outlets reported. Three men and one woman were the main suspects in a case involving a total of ten people, who, according to Iranian authorities, were working for West Jerusalem to damage Iran’s national security, the reports said.
The culprits, who were “acting under the direct guidance of the Mossad intelligence officers,” were seeking to identify Iranian security officials and kidnap them. Those held in captivity were then subjected to threats and torture as the “Mossad agents” tried to extract relevant security information from them, the Iranian Mizan news agency linked to the nation’s judiciary reported. The group also kidnapped other people to force them to feed misinformation to the Iranian security services through threats and torture as well, it added.
The four people were identified as Wafa Hanareh, Aram Omari, Rahman Parhazo, and Nasim Namazi. According to state media, they were active in Iran’s northwestern Western Azerbaijan province and the southern province of Hormozgan. The group also operated in Tehran, Minab, and Tabriz cities.
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The group maintained communication with the Mossad operatives through a video link and received money from Israeli intelligence for its “missions” in the form of digital currency, the Iranian media said. The culprits also set fire to the homes and vehicles of the Iranian security officials and plotted the assassination of an Iranian official but failed to kill them, the reports added.
Iranian law enforcement agencies were able to pick up on the group’s trail when one of the main suspects, Wafa Hanareh, was captured in an operation by the security forces, Mizan News Agency said. Other reports suggested that the Iranian security forces had put the group under surveillance for several months before acting on their suspicions.
Six other defendants in this case were sentenced to ten years behind bars on charges of “communicating with the Zionist regime” and “disrupting national security.”
Israel has not officially commented on the developments. The Israeli media reported on the case but said that the “veracity” of Iran’s claims about foiled Mossad operations is “unclear.”
