Tehran’s Prosecutor-General says two years prison for a person accused of collaboration with the “hostile American government” has been upheld.
Quoting Abbas Ja’fari Dolatabadi, the Judiciary’s new website, Mizan reported on Monday, September 11, that the court of appeal has upheld the verdict.
Dolatabadi has not fully identified the convict and has briefly referred to him as “Alireza A”.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor-general has also said that Alireza A’s case is related to the cases labelled as “domain of influence”. The term was first used by the Supreme Leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei immediately after President Rouhani’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Khamenei insisted that the danger of “American influence” threatened the Islamic Republic and cautioned President Rouhani and his administration to vigilantly keep their guards up.
Rouhani and his allies, for their part, have repeatedly warned against using the term, “American influence” as a political lever.
Earlier on September 4, Ja’fari Dolatabadi had also reported that a ten years imprisonment verdict for a U.S. citizen, two Iranian-Americans and a Lebanese permanent resident of the U.S.A. had been upheld.
The court has rejected appeals made by Iranian-American father and son, Baquer and Siamak Namazi, Chinese-born American, Xiyue Wang and Nizar Zakka.
Xiyue Wang was tried for “collaborating with foreign governments” while Siamak Namazi and his octogenarian father, Baquer and Lebanese Nizar Zakka were convicted for “espionage” and “collaboration with a foreign government”. They were each sentenced to ten years prison.
Reacting to these verdicts, the U.S. government has protested against the conviction of “a number of persons” with dual nationality, in the Islamic republic.
Meanwhile, Washington has warned its citizens on travel to Iran.
Furthermore, Dolatabadi has also said the former chairman of Bank Melli Iran (Iran National Bank), Mahmoud Reza Khavari is going to be tried in absentia. Khavari, 65, who six years ago fled Iran, is reportedly a naturalized citizen of Canada. His name has been on the Interpol wanted list since 2012.
Khavari, who is still at large, is accused of embezzlement, fraud, taking bribes and illegal acquisition of property. He has also allegedly been involved in the notorious Iranian embezzlement of roughly 2.6 billion dollars.
The scandal involved using forged documents to fraudulently buy assets that included major state-owned companies; Bank Melli which Khavari led as its chairman of the board and managing director, was accused of facilitating fraudulent payments, Toronto Star reported on October 3, 2011.
Immediately after the scandal, the Islamic Republic legally barred Iranians with dual nationality from directing its banks.
In recent years, a number of conservatives, hardliners and the Judiciary’s officials have singled out Iranians with dual nationality as the most important channels for foreign (mainly American) influence in the Islamic Republic and called for their dismissal from high profile positions.
