Iran has executed one of its nuclear scientists after he was convicted of spying for the United States. Nuclear Scientist Shahram Amiri was detained in 2010 when he returned to the Islamic Republic from the United States. At that time Iran accused the CIA of kidnapping Amiri, a university researcher working for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, after he disappeared during a Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009, and later surfaced in the United States. When the Iranian scientist initially returned to Iran in 2010 and received a hero’s welcome, after claiming he was indeed kidnapped by American and Saudi agents: “I was abducted in Medina in front of my hotel by U.S. and Saudi intelligence agents. Then I was transferred to an unknown location in Saudi Arabia”.
Shortly after his return, the scientist was arrested – after a US official said in 2010 that Washington had received “useful information” from Amiri. Following the execution, the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted a court spokesman who said that Amiri gave “vital information about the country to the enemy” through his United States connections.