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by Kianouche Dorranie
SHIRAZ, Iran, July 1 (AFP) - An Iranian revolutionary court Saturday jailed 10 out of 13 Iranian Jews accused of spying for Israel for terms of up to 13 years after a controversial closed-door trial. Judiciary chief Hossein-Ali Amiri said two Muslims, a military industrialist and a soldier, were given two years each, while three Jews and two Muslims were acquitted. But the defendants escaped the death penalty that had been feared. While the fates of 17 people were sealed Saturday, Amiri said the authorities are pursuing leads on "several" other unnamed people -- all of whom he said are living abroad -- and that the espionage case is "still open." "Several of the accused in the case of spying for the Zionist regime are abroad and, due to insufficient evidence about some of the accused, the case would be open until the return of the fugitives and completion of investigations," Amiri was quoted by the official IRNA as saying. Saturday's verdict said the accused belonged to a spy ring that dated back more than 20 years and collected sensitive military information from around Shiraz in the south and Isfahan in the center. "This verdict is a great mistake, it is political and unacceptable for the families and the lawyers," chief defense lawyer Ismail Nasseri said, adding that all the convicted Jews would appeal. Israel expressed shock and concern and called on the international community to work to secure the release of the Jews, who it said were totally innocent. And the Dutch government called for a joint European Union response, saying the verdict was a test for EU-Iran relations. Shiraz trader Hamid Tefelin, 41, the main defendant, was given nine years for spying for Israel plus four years for "collaboration" with the Jewish state, Iran's arch enemy, which Tehran does not recognize. Rabbi and language teacher Asher Zadmehr, 54, said to be the leader of the ring, was given six years for spying and seven for collaboration. Of the others convicted, one defendant got 11 years in total, one 10 years, four eight years, one five years and one four years. The three Jews acquitted were the only ones free on bail throughout the process. The member of the Iranian parliament for the country's Jewish community, Maurice Mottamed, called the penalties heavy and unexpected. "Our community is in a state of shock," he told AFP. "There is no clemency here, contrary to what we had been assured." When lawyer Shirzad Rahmani announced Tefelin's sentence his sister fainted then became hysterical. Other Jews on the scene protested vigorously. International observers had expressed concern about the fairness of the trial, particularly after eight of the Jews gave televised confessions to the spying charges. In a strong reaction the Israeli foreign ministry said the verdicts "will deprive innocent people of their freedom for many years." "Iran cannot be accepted as a member of the international community as long as Jewish prisoners are rotting away in prison when they have done no wrong," it said. The Dutch government said it viewed the sentences "with horror", and Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen hauled in Tehran's ambassador to warn him of possible EU reactions. EU ambassadors in Tehran had met Saturday to review the situation, spokesman Pim Waldeck told AFP. But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi, quoted by the state news agency IRNA, accused Israel of doing all it could to mobilize international opinion "by raising false claims so as to derail the legal proceedings against the spy suspects from their natural course". Asefi said, "Despite a wide-scale propaganda campaign by the Zionist regime, Iran's judiciary managed to deal with the case of the accused independently and based on national interests." The verdict said the ring "collected sensitive military information, notably on the radar defenses of the Shiraz and Isfahan regions, the defense industry and the Mobarak steelworks at Isfahan." While it betrayed Iran, the spy ring was primarily religious and ideological, the indictment declared. The two Muslims sentenced, Ali Akbar Safay, a military industrialist, and Mehrab Russofi, a soldier, held "highly sensitive posts" in the defense industry, working on important projects, it said. |
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