Iran sentences Iranian national to 10 years for spying for Britain

Iran announced on Monday it had sentenced an Iranian national to 10 years in prison for spying for Britain, the country’s judiciary said.

“An Iranian who was in charge of Iran desk in the British Council and was cooperating with Britain’s intelligence agency… was sentenced to 10 years in prison after clear confessions,” said judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili, according to the Fars news agency.

Esmaili added that the suspect, who had allegedly been tasked with drawing up and managing cultural “infiltration” projects, had been arrested by Iranian intelligence and security agencies “more than a year ago.”

The British Council is a cultural and educational organization overseas but according to its website it is not “physically present” in Iran. Iranian authorities shut down the British Council there more than a decade ago for what Esmaili described as “illegal activities.”

Esmaili said that during her confession, the suspect described how she had been recruited and provided information on “the instructions that the English security agency had given” her.

He said that she was “an Iranian student who wanted to live and work in the UK,” had been “employed by the British Council” and “repeatedly traveled to Iran under aliases… and made connections with artistic and theater groups.”

A London-based British-Council employee was arrested in Iran in 2018 during a trip to visit relatives.

It was not immediately clear if she was the person sentenced on Monday.

Iran is already holding British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is in jail in Tehran for alleged sedition.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and was arrested in 2016 while visiting relatives for the Persian New Year.

Iranian authorities accused her of plotting against the government and handed her a five-year jail sentence.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has been separated from his daughter, Gabriella, who was with her mother when she was detained in Iran and has since remained in the country with her grandparents. She is due to return to the UK this summer to begin her education, a prospect that is said to have caused Zaghari-Ratcliffe much anguish.

Britain has taken the unusual step of granting her diplomatic protection in a bid to free her.

Last month, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt dismissed the suggestion of a prisoner swap for Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a diplomatic ploy, while her husband said the idea was “almost impossible.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested a swap between Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Negar Ghodskani, an Iranian woman held in Australia on a US extradition warrant.