Iranian authorities on Monday hanged a postgraduate student from a university in Tehran on charges of espionage. Erfan Shakourzadeh, 29, was hanged after being convicted for collaborating with the CIA and the Mossad, the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.
Norway-based rights groups Iran Human Rights and Hengaw said that Shakourzadeh was a student at Tehran’s prestigious Iran University of Science and Technology and had written a message before his execution rejecting the charges as fabricated.
Describing him as an “elite student”, IHR said he was held “in solitary confinement and subjected to torture and forced to give false confessions”. He is the fifth person to be executed on espionage charges since the beginning of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February.