Iran executes ‘Mossad spy’ aged 24

IRAN has hanged a man it said was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and whom it convicted of killing one of its nuclear scientists in 2010.

Tehran has accused Israel and the United States of assassinating four Iranian scientists since 2010 to sabotage its nuclear programme, which the West suspects is hiding an attempt to develop a weapons capability.

Majid Jamali Fashi, 24, was hanged at Tehran’s Evin Prison yesterday after being sentenced to death in August last year for the murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, Iran’s state news agency quoted the central prosecutor’s office as saying. It said he had confessed to the crime.

Mr Mohammadi was killed in January 2010 when a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle outside his home in Tehran went off.

Iranian media reported that Fashi had confessed to travelling to Tel Aviv to receive training from Mossad before returning to Iran to plot the assassination.

A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said at the time that Mr Mohammadi, 50, a Tehran University professor, was not involved in its activities.

The most recent attack on an Iranian scientist was in January. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed when a bomb attached to his vehicle detonated.