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Iran Summons UK Ambassador over Extradition of Iranian to the US

A plague marks the re-opening of the British Embassy by Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Tehran, Iran August 23, 2015. REUTERS/Darren Staples
A plague marks the re-opening of the British Embassy by Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Tehran, Iran August 23, 2015. REUTERS/Darren Staples
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Iran Summons UK Ambassador over Extradition of Iranian to the US

A plague marks the re-opening of the British Embassy by Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Tehran, Iran August 23, 2015. REUTERS/Darren Staples
A plague marks the re-opening of the British Embassy by Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Tehran, Iran August 23, 2015. REUTERS/Darren Staples

Iran on Wednesday summoned the British ambassador to Tehran after London extradited an Iranian citizen, wanted on legal charges of circumventing sanctions on Tehran, to the United States.
The Iranian foreign ministry said it had “conveyed to the British ambassador Iran’s strong protest” against the “illegal arrest of the Iranian citizen and his extradition to the United States”, reported Agence France Presse.
On Tuesday, the US Justice Department announced that Saeid Haji Agha Mousaei, 53, had been extradited by Britain to appear before a court in Chicago.
The United States has accused him of transporting to Iran advanced US technology with “military applications”.
Washington has imposed crippling sanctions on Iran since 2018, after withdrawing from an agreement secured three years earlier that placed curbs on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Talks aimed at reviving the 2015 agreement failed in the summer of 2022.

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Iranian Authorities Execute Kurdish Man after 15 Years in Prison

Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
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Iranian Authorities Execute Kurdish Man after 15 Years in Prison

Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
Activists warn of a new surge in hangings in Iran (Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

Iranian authorities on Thursday executed Kurdish man Kamran Sheikheh, the last surviving defendant in a case linked to a cleric's killing in 2008, rights groups said.
Sheikheh, charged of “corruption on Earth,” was put to death in Urmia prison in northwestern Iran, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in separate statements.
He was arrested in 2009 and was sentenced to death with six other prisoners by a branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh.
Sheikheh's six co-defendants had all been executed in separate hangings between November 2023 and May 2024.
Amnesty International has said they had been sentenced to death “in a grossly unfair trial” that had been “marred by allegations of torture and other ill-treatment,” according to AFP.
IHR described Sheikheh as a “political prisoner” who had been sentenced to death “based on torture-tainted confessions in a grossly unfair trial.”
The execution “was unlawful according to international law and the Islamic republic's own laws, amounting to an extrajudicial killing,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
HRANA said that the proceedings related to the killing of an imam of a mosque in the northwestern city of Mahabad in September 2008.
Sheikheh and the six others were arrested in connection with the killing in January and February 2010 and sentenced to death in 2018.
Activists say that Iran's use of the death penalty disproportionately targets members of the Kurdish, Arab and Baluch ethnic minorities in western and southeast Iran.
In one of the latest cases, rights groups said the Revolutionary Court of Tehran had sentenced Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish woman held in the capital's Evin prison, to death on charges of “rebellion.”
Earlier this month, Iranian authorities sentenced to death another Kurdish woman, Sharifeh Mohammadi, on the same charges over accusations of links to an outlawed Kurdish organization.
IHR warned that Sheikheh's execution is part of a new surge in hangings in Iran marking the end of an apparent lull coinciding with snap presidential elections several weeks ago.
The rights group said at least 20 people have been executed since Saturday.
Iran executed 853 people in 2023, the highest number recorded since 2015, representing a 48% increase from 2022 in the wake of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
The spike in death penalties has continued into 2024, with at least 95 recorded executions by March 20, according to Amnesty International.