Iran jails British-Iranian spy accused of being an 'agent of England's intelligence service'
A dual nationality British-Iranian has been sentenced to six years in prison in Iran on spying charges, according to authorities.
The dual citizen has not been named and details of the case have not been disclosed, including when the person was arrested or where.
Announcing the ruling on Sunday night, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said only that the courts had handed down a “six-year prison sentence for an agent of England's intelligence service".
The Mizan Iranian news agency quoted him as saying the same British-Iranian citizen was also under investigation in a separate case related to a private bank, giving no further details.
There are two public cases of British-Iranians held in Iran, one of them being Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the charity worker accused of plotting the overthrow of Iran's government.
However, there are likely to be more cases, which have not been publicised by either the Iranian authorities or family members of those held in Iran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have arrested at least 30 dual nationals since 2015, mostly on spying charges, Reuters reported in November. Iran does not formally recognise dual citizenship, which limits the access foreign embassies have to their dual citizens held there.
The Foreign Office said it was aware of the reports last night and was looking into them. Sources suggested it may take some time to establish the veracity or otherwise of the information.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the parent company of Reuters, has been sentenced to five years for plotting the overthrow of Iran's government. Her family and her employer insist she was visiting relatives in the country when she was arrested in April 2016.
Her case was raised by Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, during a visit to Iran in December. An early release mooted before Christmas came to nothing. The head of the prison service where she is held said last week that he had approved her release, but her family say they have been left largely in the dark about further details.
The other known dual citizen held in Iran is Kamal Foroughi, a 78-year-old British-Iranian businessman, who was arrested in 2011 and convicted of espionage and possessing alcohol charges. His sixth year in prison was marked by a campaign in the UKin may last year to have him freed. Britain's foreign office says it has raised the case with Iranian authorities.
In September the UN called for the release of two US-Iranian citizens held for ten years on spying charges handed down in closed-door hearings in Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which handles cases involving alleged attempts to overthrow the government.
The UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said their case is part of “an emerging pattern involving the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of dual nationals”.
Analysts have accused hard-liners in the Islamic Republic's security agencies of using dual nationality prisoners as leverage for regional and global influence. Tehran denies the charges.
