Iran puts out video of ex-top official admitting to role in killing of nuclear chief

Iran state media publishes a video in which a former senior defense official who was sentenced to death for spying for the UK also appears to confess to playing a role in the 2020 killing of the country’s nuclear chief, Reuters reports.

Yesterday the judiciary said Ali Reza Akbari, who was deputy defense minister until 2001, was a “key spy” for British intelligence.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed when his car was ambushed on a highway outside Tehran in November 2020, in an attack Iran blames on Israel.

“They wanted to know about high-ranking officials depending on the major developments… for example he (the British agent) asked me whether Fakhrizadeh could be involved in such and such projects and I said why not,” Akbari said in one of the video clips.

Akbari has not been seen in public since 2019, when he was apparently arrested.

In a separate audio recording broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, Akbari said he was tortured in detention over months to confess to crimes he had not committed, Reuters says.