Iran executes former Defense Ministry contractor over spying for CIA

Iran has executed a former contract employee for the Defense Ministry's Aerospace Industries Organization on charges of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the White House.

News ID: 445574

Date: 23 June 2019 - 21:16

RNA - Jalal Hajizavar was executed at the Rajaee Shahr prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, after being convicted by a military court, the Judiciary Organization of the Armed Forces reported on Saturday.

He was dismissed nine years ago and had explicitly confessed that he had collaborated with the CIA and spied for the United States in return for money, it added.

According to the report, documents and spying equipment were discovered at his home.

It emphasized that all legal procedures had been observed during investigations into Hajizavar's case while his spouse also received a 15-year prison term for taking part in espionage activities.

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said on Monday that the country’s intelligence apparatus had successfully discovered and dealt a serious blow to a cyber-espionage network, which was run by the CIA and operated in a number of countries.

“It is interesting to know that one of the most complicated cyber networks run by the CIA in the area of cyber-espionage, which accounted for a major part of the CIA’s operational capacity in target countries, has been uncovered by Iran's intelligence apparatus and [a serious] blow has been dealt to it,” Iran's top security official said.

A day after Shamkhani's remarks, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry detailed how it recently delivered an unprecedented destructive blow to an integrated network of operatives serving the US spy agency via the Internet.

“The Ministry recently detected and destroyed a big internationally-active spy network of the US Central Intelligence Agency in a world first,” said the unnamed official.

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