In Urmiye, three Kurdish kolbar, including a South Kurdish citizen, were sentenced to death for allegedly spying for Israel. They were also accused of transporting weapons that were used in an attack on a nuclear scientist.
An Iranian Revolutionary Court in Urmiye (Urmia) has sentenced three Kurds to death for spying for Israel. According to the regime's judiciary, the defendants were accused of helping the Israeli Secret Service Mossad, the Iranian news agency Fars reported on Wednesday. They are said to have helped transport equipment that was used in the murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020. The human rights organization Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported that the three men are kolbar.
Fakhrizadeh was considered the "father of the Iranian nuclear program" and was most recently head of the research and technological development department in the Iranian Ministry of Defense, responsible for the country's missile program. The background to his murder is disputed, but according to various intelligence services, the Mossad was most likely responsible for the assassination. Tehran claims that the weapons used in the attack on Fakhrizadeh were smuggled into Iran in individual parts - by both Israeli and Iranian citizens. The Iranian judiciary assumes that some of these individual parts were transported by the defendants.
The defendants are Edris Ali and Azad Shojae from Serdeşt and Rasoul Ahmad Mohammad, a citizen of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). According to information from KHRN, they were arrested in Serdeşt in July 2023 by agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and initially held for several months in an internment camp in Urmiye before being transferred to the city's central prison. During the trial, they are said to have denied any involvement in the alleged acts and accused the Iranian authorities of having been forced to "confess" under torture. They had merely smuggled various goods across the borders of Iran and Iraq, including alcohol.
Drinking alcohol has been prohibited by law in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In 2018, calls for Kolbar to be killed were even issued in Iran by fatwa. According to the KHRN, the specific charge against Edris Ali, Azad Shojae and Rasoul Ahmad Mohammad was "importation of murder equipment disguised as alcoholic beverages." According to the France-based human rights group, an appeal has already been filed against the verdict.
