Iran has hanged a man it said was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad whom it convicted of killing one of its nuclear scientists in 2010, reports said citing Iranian state media reported on May 15. Tehran has accused Israel and the United States of assassinating four Iranian scientists since 2010 in order to sabotage its nuclear programme which the West suspects is hiding Iran’s attempt to develop a nuclear weapons capability.
Twenty-four year old Majid Jamali Fashi was hanged at Tehran’s Evin Prison after being sentenced to death in August last year for the murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, Iran’s state news agency quoted the central prosecutor’s office as saying. It said he had confessed to the crime. Report said Fashi had confessed to travelling to Tel Aviv to receive training from Mossad before returning to Iran to plot the assassination.
A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said at the time that Ali-Mohammadi, a 50-year-old Tehran University professor, was not involved in its activities.
The most recent attack on an Iranian scientist occurred in January. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan – a deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility – was killed when a magnetic bomb planted on his vehicle detonated.