Iran’s judiciary said on Tuesday that it sentenced three people to death over the 2020 killing of the country’s leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
“The judicial processes of these three people were carried out in the Revolutionary Court of Urmia, and they were sentenced to death in the initial stage, and the case is currently in the appeal stage,” AFP quoted judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir as saying at a Tehran press conference.
The 59-year-old, considered the chief of Iran’s nuclear program, was under U.S. sanctions at the time of his death. He was targeted on Nov. 27 in a road ambush outside of Tehran that the regime blamed Israel for perpetrating.
“After some investigations, three people out of eight arrested in West Azarbaijan province were accused of committing espionage for the occupying regime of Israel,” Jahangir said.
They are also accused of “transporting equipment into Iran for the assassination of martyr Fakhrizadeh under the guise of smuggling alcoholic beverages.”
Judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi announced in December 2022 that nine people had been charged with the capital offense of “corruption on earth” for collaborating with Israel in the assassination.
Authorities in Iran on Monday executed a Jewish man, Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani, who had been sentenced to death for murder, Iranian media reported.
“The sentence of retribution was executed this morning,” said Hamidreza Karimi, the prosecutor for Kermanshah in western Iran, according to the Mehr news agency.
The Islamic Republic executed 853 people in 2023—the most since 2015, London-based Amnesty International said last month.
