Iran Sentences Suspected CIA Agents To Death
DUBAI : Iran has captured 17 spies working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and some have been sentenced to death, Iranian media reported on Monday.
State television quoted the Intelligence Ministry as saying it had broken up a CIA spying ring and captured 17 suspects. A ministry official said some of those arrested had been sentenced to death, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The announcement comes after three months of spiralling confrontation with the West that began when new tighter U.S. sanctions took effect at the start of May. Last week Iran captured a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz after Britain’s Royal Marines seized an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar in July 4.
“The identified spies were employed in sensitive and vital private sector centres in the economic, nuclear, infrastructural, military and cyber areas… where they collected classified information,” said a ministry statement read on state television.
Iranian authorities said on Monday that security agencies had arrested 17 suspects and sentenced some of them to death after dismantling a CIA spy ring in a case announced last month.
The agencies “successfully dismantled a (CIA) spy network on July 18,” the head of counter-intelligence at the Iranian intelligence ministry, whose identity was not revealed, told reporters in Tehran. “Some were sentenced to death and some to long-term imprisonment.”
AFP , with Agencies inputs )
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