Accusation of spying for Israel
Iran executes four men over alleged Mossad connections
January 29, 2024, 11:54 a.m
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Iran’s judiciary carries out the death sentence against four members of the Kurdish minority. The men are said to have planned an attack on an Iranian rocket industry factory for the Israeli secret service Mossad. According to human rights activists, the confessions were obtained under torture.
Four people who were sentenced to death on charges of planning attacks on behalf of Israel were executed in Iran. The death sentences were carried out after the Supreme Court rejected their appeal, Iranian state media reported. Those executed were accused of having crossed illegally from Iraq’s Kurdistan region to carry out a bomb attack for the Israeli secret service Mossad on a factory in Isfahan that produces equipment for the Iranian Defense Ministry.
According to media reports, the attack was supposed to be carried out in the summer of 2022 and was foiled by Iranian secret service. The four men were trained by the Mossad in “African countries,” as the Iranian judicial authority announced on its website Misan Online. The members were arrested and large quantities of weapons and explosives were seized. They were sentenced to death in September 2023, but had appealed their death sentence. The death sentences were carried out early Monday morning, the authority said.
The Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw accused the Islamic Republic of an unfair trial. “Throughout the process, prisoners were denied their basic rights to legal representation, visitation and even communication with their families,” Hengaw wrote in a statement. The confessions of the four Kurds were extracted under torture.
There are similar reports and executions on espionage charges in Iran again and again. Five people had already been executed on similar charges in December. Human rights activists have criticized the practice of capital punishment in Iran for decades. There are no official figures on executions. According to an annual report from Hengaw, 829 people were executed last year. Amnesty International accuses the authorities of using the death penalty as an “instrument of oppression” against ethnic minorities.
Mutual accusations – enemies for a long time
Israel and Iran have long been enemies. Israel considers Iran to be the greatest threat to its security and is particularly trying to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Both countries are waging a kind of shadow war. In December, a general in the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria.
Israel accuses Iran of supporting attacks against the Jewish state by militant groups such as the radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas. Iran, on the other hand, accuses Israel of sabotaging the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The Tehran leadership accuses Israel of being responsible for attacks on nuclear facilities and murders of nuclear scientists. Israel has not yet denied the allegations or admitted involvement.