Iran sentences alleged US spies to up to 10 years in prison

Iran sentenced eight environmental activists,
including an Iranian who reportedly also has British and American citizenship,
to prison sentences ranging from four to 10 years on charges of spying for the
United States and acting against Iran’s national security, the judiciary said
Tuesday.
According to the judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein
Esmaili, an appeals court issued the final verdicts.
Two of the activists, Morad Tahbaz and Niloufar
Bayani, got 10 years each and were ordered to return the money they allegedly
received from the U.S. government for their services.
Tahbaz is an Iranian who also holds U.S. and British
citizenship.
Iran does not recognize dual or multiple
nationalities, meaning Iranians it detains cannot receive consular assistance
from their other countries. In most cases, dual nationals have faced secret
charges in closed-door hearings before Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which
handles cases involving alleged attempts to overthrow the government.
Esmaili, the judiciary spokesman, said two other
activists, Houman Jokar and Taher Ghadirian, each got eight-year sentences for
allegedly “collaborating with the hostile government of America.”
Another three of the activists, Sam Rajabi, Sepideh
Kashan Doust and Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, were sentenced to six years in
prison each. The eighth activist, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, got four years. All the
activists were arrested in early 2018.
A ninth activist who was arrested at the time,
Kavous Seyed Emami, an Iranian-Canadian naional, died while in custody under
disputed circumstances in February 2018. His widow then was blocked from flying
out of Iran, but later made it out.
Iran is also holding others with ties to the West,
including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman sentenced to five
years on allegations of planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while
traveling in Iran with her young daughter.
Iranian businessman Siamak Namazi and his
81-year-old father Baquer, a former UNICEF representative who served as
governor of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province under the U.S.-backed shah, both
are serving 10-year prison sentences on espionage charges.
Iranian-American Robin Shahini was released on bail
in 2017 after staging a hunger strike while serving an 18-year prison sentence
for “collaboration with a hostile government.” Shahini has since returned to
America and is now suing Iran in U.S. federal court.
Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in
Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorized CIA mission, remains missing.
Earlier this month, Iran’s supreme court confirmed
the death penalty for Amir Rahimpour, who was convicted of spying for the
C.I.A. Iranian state media have alleged that he had shared details of the
Islamic Republic’s nuclear program with the American spy agency.
Esmaili said at the time that Rahimpor would soon be
executed.
Iran has in the past has sentenced alleged American
and Israeli spies to death. The last such spy executed was Shahram Amiri, who
defected to the U.S. at the height of Western efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear
program. When he returned in 2010, he was welcomed with flowers by government
leaders and even went on the Iranian talk-show circuit. Then he mysteriously
disappeared.
He was hanged in August 2016, the same week that
Tehran executed a group of militants and a year after Iran agreed to a landmark
accord to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic
sanctions.
Tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S. since
President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear
deal. A U.S. drone strike in January killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen.
Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, prompting Tehran to retaliate with a ballistic
missile strike on Iraqi bases housing American troops.