A British citizen has been executed in Iran after being accused of spying for Mi6, according to state TV.
Alireza Akbari, who served as deputy defence minister during the tenure of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, was arrested sometime between 2019 and 2020 and accused of spying for the UK.
Iranian state TV confirmed the execution on Twitter, saying that Akbari had been executed after facing charges of "corruption and widespread action against the internal and external security of the country through espionage for the intelligence apparatus of the British government".
Mr Akbari continued to deny the charges.
A statement from the Iranian Students’ News Agency stated: “The sentence of Alireza Akbari, the son of Ali with dual Iranian-British citizenship, who was sentenced to death on charges of corruption in the land and widespread action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the intelligence apparatus of the British government, was executed.”
Earlier this week, Mr Akbari's wife, Maryam, said an Iranian official had asked her to come to his office in Tehran for a "final meeting".
An audio message from Mr Akbari sees him claim he was tortured by Iranian authorities.
He also claimed he was forced to confess in front of a camera to crimes that he did not commit.
The chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, Alicia Kearns, said on Thursday that the British ambassador to Tehran should be withdrawn if Akbari is executed.
On Wednesday, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly urged the Iranian government not to execute Mr Akbari, who held dual British and Iranian citizenship.
Mr Cleverly said: "Iran must halt the execution of British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari and immediately release him. This is a politically motivated act by a barbaric regime that has total disregard for human life.”
Maryam Akbari told The Guardian that there was "no evidence that he was a spy" except for "a confession that was extracted after he was drugged and interrogated for 3,500 hours".
She added that the only contact he had with British official "were those permitted by his official status".
According to Tasnim News, Alireza had appealed his sentence, but had this rejected by Iran's Supreme Court and Court of Appeal.
The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology claimed Mr Akbari was "one of the most important agents of the British spy service" and accused him of collecting important information about Iran and passing it to MI6.
They said he was arrested after a "long and multi-layered process" in the area of counter-intelligence, technical and deception operations.
According to his heavily edited confession, Mr Akbari allegedly provided reports on Iran’s nuclear programme and efforts to evade western economic sanctions.
In the video confession, he was asked about the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was gunned down in Teheran in 2020.
In the interview, Mr Akbari said: “They wanted to know about high-ranking officials depending on the major developments … for example [a British agent] asked me whether Fakhrizadeh could be involved in such and such projects, and I said why not.”
It was claimed that Mr Akbari had three different MI6 handers over a period of five years, but his friends say these people were an estate agent, an immigration lawyer and an education admissions adviser.
