British citizen among environmental activists jailed on spying charges

IRAN has jailed eight environmental activists, including an Iranian who reportedly also has British and American citizenship, on charges of spying for the US and acting against Iran’s national security, the judiciary said.

According to a judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, an appeals court issued the final verdicts, with prison sentences ranging from four to 10 years.

Two of the activists, Morad Tahbaz and Niloufar Bayani, were handed 10 years each and ordered to return money they allegedly received from the US government for their services.

Mr Tahbaz is an Iranian who also holds US and British citizenship.

Tehran does not recognise dual or multiple nationalities, meaning Iranians it detains cannot receive consular assistance from their other countries. In most cases, dual nationals have faced secret charges in closed-door hearings before

Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which handles cases involving alleged attempts to overthrow the government.

Mr Esmaili said two other activists, Houman Jokar and

Taher Ghadirian, each received eight-year sentences for allegedly “collaborating with the hostile government of America”.

Another three of the activists, Sam Rajabi, Sepideh Kashan Doust and Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, were sentenced to six years each. The eighth, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, got four years.

A ninth activist arrested at the same time in early 2018, Kavous Seyed Emami, an Iranian-canadian national, died in custody under disputed circumstances in February 2018. His widow was then blocked from flying out of Iran, but later made it out.

Iran is also holding others with ties to the West, including Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe, a British-iranian woman sentenced to five years on allegations of planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while travelling in Iran with her young daughter.

Iranian businessman Siamak Namazi and his 81-year-old father Baquer, a former Unicef representative who served as governor of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province under the Us-backed shah, are serving 10-year sentences on espionage charges.

Iranian-american Robin Shahini was released on bail in 2017 after staging a hunger strike while serving an 18-year prison sentence for “collaboration with a hostile government”. He has since returned to America and is suing Iran in US federal court.

Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorised CIA mission, remains missing.

Earlier this month, Iran’s supreme court confirmed the death penalty for Amir Rahimpour, who was convicted of spying for the CIA. Iranian state media have alleged that he had shared details of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme with the American spy agency.