Iran executes man accused of helping Israel kill Revolutionary Guards colonel

[ad_1] Iran has executed a 36-year-old man it accused of serving to the Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence company, kill a senior officer within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran in 2022.

Iranian state media mentioned Mohsen Langarneshin was hanged, the standard technique of execution in Iran, at Ghezel Hesar jail early on Wednesday morning.

Langarneshin’s household and human rights teams insisted the previous IT marketing consultant was harmless of the fees towards him and that any reported confessions had been obtained by torture or blackmail.

On Tuesday, Langarneshin’s mom made an emotional attraction for his life to be spared. “Please pray for my baby … I have no idea if he'll see the dawn tomorrow or not,” she mentioned in a put up on social media.

“I don’t know why the court docket refuses to simply accept any of the paperwork and proof we deliver. We now have so many items of proof that show his innocence, however nothing is accepted.”

In response to Iran’s state information company IRNA, Langarneshin was a “senior spy” for the Mossad who offered essential “technical assist” for the assassination of Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a colonel within the Revolutionary Guards who was shot 5 occasions by gunmen on a motorcycle outdoors his residence in Tehran, in addition to for different alleged operations.

The IRNA report mentioned the Mossad recruited Langarneshin in 2020 and that he met with Israeli intelligence officers in Georgia and Nepal. He was arrested in July 2023.

Activists worry that Iran scapegoats harmless individuals after failing to catch the precise brokers, who've typically escaped abroad by the point investigators establish them.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights monitor, mentioned: “Mohsen Langarneshin, who was sentenced to loss of life in an unfair judicial course of primarily based on confessions obtained underneath torture and charged with espionage for Israel, was hanged at daybreak in the present day.”

“The Iranian authorities’ execution machine is accelerating on daily basis, taking the lives of extra individuals,” he added, describing the executions as “extrajudicial killings”.

A minimum of 335 individuals have been hanged in Iran thus far this 12 months alone, campaigners say. Iran executed greater than 900 individuals in 2024. A person was executed in December 2023 after he was discovered responsible of collaborating with the Mossad. 4 others had been hanged a 12 months earlier over alleged ties to Israel.

The US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Heart, which had campaigned over Langarneshin’s case, mentioned he had been convicted at a revolutionary court docket presided over by a decide, Abolghasem Salavati, who has been put underneath US and EU sanctions and is infamous for handing out loss of life sentences.

“He denied all costs, stating that his confessions had been extracted underneath torture,” the group mentioned.

The revolutionary courts had been arrange after the 1979 revolution and ship typically abstract justice in closed hearings.

Israel and Iran have been engaged in a shadow battle of assassinations and bombings for many years. A sequence of assaults attributed to the Mossad has focused Iranian scientists, consultants and teachers, many related to Iran’s nuclear programme. Final 12 months, Israel is assumed to have killed Ismail Haniyeh, probably the most senior political chief of Hamas, with a bomb in a bed room of a authorities guesthouse in Tehran

In Israel, a 72-year-old man was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years in jail accused of discussing plots with Iranian intelligence companies to assassinate senior authorities officers, together with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US president, Donald Trump, is searching for a brand new take care of the Iranian management on its nuclear programme, with each Israel and its ally the US lengthy refusing to rule out a army strike on Iran.

The Iranian overseas minister, Abbas Araghchi, mentioned on Wednesday that Iran anticipated the subsequent spherical of negotiations with the US to be held in Rome on Saturday, including that Iran additionally anticipated having a gathering on Friday with France, Germany and the UK to debate the talks.