Iran says it executed nuclear scientist in US spy mystery

 Iran executed a nuclear scientist who defected to the U.S. and returned to the Islamic Republic under mysterious circumstances a year later, an official said Sunday, acknowledging for the first time that the nation secretly detained, tried and convicted a man authorities once heralded as a hero.

Shahram Amiri vanished in 2009 while on a religious pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia, only to reappear a year later in a series of contradictory online videos filmed in the U.S. He then walked into the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home.

In interviews, Amiri described being kidnapped and held against his will by Saudi and American spies, while U.S. officials said he was to receive millions of dollars for his help in understanding Iran's contested nuclear program. He was hanged the same week as Tehran executed a group of militants, a year after his country agreed to a landmark accord to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Speaking to journalists Sunday, Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi said Amiri was convicted of spying charges in a death-sentence case upheld by an appeals court.

"This person who had access to the country's secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satanm" Ejehi said. "He provided the enemy with vital and secret information of the country."

Ejehi did not explain why authorities never announced Amiri's conviction, though he said Amiri had access to lawyers.

News about Amiri, born in 1977, has been scant since his return to Iran. Last year, his father Asgar Amiri told the BBC's Farsi-language service that his son had been held at a secret site. Ejehi said Amiri's family mistakenly believed he only received a 10-year prison sentence.

On Tuesday, Iran announced it had executed a number of criminals, describing them mainly as militants from the country's Kurdish minority. Then, an obituary notice for Amiri circulated in his hometown of Kermanshah, a city some 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of Tehran, according to the Iranian pro-reform daily newspaper Shargh.

Manoto, a private satellite television channel based in London believed to be run by those who back Iran's ousted shah, first reported Saturday that Amiri had been executed. BBC Farsi also quoted Amiri's mother saying her son's neck bore ligature marks suggesting he had been hanged by the state.