Four people were sentenced to death in Iran on Wednesday over accusations they were cooperating with the Israeli Mossad spy agency, including carrying out kidnappings, the semi-official Mehr news agency said.
Iran routinely arrests Iranian citizens for allegedly spying for Israel. It recently claimed it had dismantled an Israeli spy network that was planning to attack a nuclear facility.
The four were arrested by Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence, Mehr said, and “sentenced to death for the crime of cooperating with the intelligence services of the Zionist regime and for kidnapping.”
“With guidance from the Zionist intelligence service, this network of thugs was stealing and destroying private and public property, kidnapping people, and obtaining fake confessions,” it added.
Three other people were given prison sentences of between five and 10 years for acting against national security, kidnapping, and possessing illegal weapons, the report said.
Iranian authorities in the past blamed the Mossad, the CIA and Saudi intelligence agencies of working together to engineer the ongoing nationwide protests.
The intelligence agencies “planned extensively to launch a nationwide riot in Iran with the aim of committing crimes against the great nation of Iran and its territorial integrity, as well as laying the groundwork for the intensification of external pressures,” a statement from Iranian authorities read last month.
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen recently revealed that his agency had carried out “countless operations” in Iran’s heartland under his instruction.
“Without going into too many details, I can tell you the Mossad had many successes in the fight against Iran’s nuclear program,” Cohen said. “We operated around the world and on Iranian soil itself, in the very heartland of the ayatollahs.”