20th July, 2020
Iran executed on Monday an Iranian citizen, Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, sentenced to death on charges of spying for the CIA and the Mossad.
He was arrested in October 2018 and sentenced to death in August 2019.
“Mahmoud Mousavi Majd’s sentence was carried out on Monday morning over the charge of espionage so that the case of his betrayal to his country will be closed forever,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.
Mousavi-Majd, who left Iran with his family as a child and grew up in Syria, was never a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), “but he was able to infiltrate many sensitive areas under the guise of a translator,” Fars said.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency had previously said Mousavi-Majd was arrested and handed over to Iran in 2018 by the Lebanese Hezbollah in Syria.
He received a monthly payment of $5,000 from the CIA and the Mossad in exchange for information on Iranian forces in Syria, Tasnim claimed.
Majd had migrated to Syria in the 1970s with his family and worked as an English and Arabic language translator at a company, Mizan said.
When war broke out, he chose to stay in the country while his family left.
“His knowledge of Arabic and familiarity with Syria’s geography made him close to Iranian military advisers and he took responsibilities in groups stationed from Idlib to Latakia,” the site added.
Majd was not a member of the Revolutionary Guards, but he “infiltrated many sensitive areas under the cover of being a translator.”
He was found to have been paid “American dollars to reveal information on adviser convoys, military equipment and communication systems, commanders and their movements, important geographical areas, codes and passwords” until he came under scrutiny and his access was downgraded.
He was arrested in October 2018, Mizan said.
Iran said last week it had executed another man convicted of spying for the CIA by selling information about Iran’s missile program.