A “last visit” to Mr Akbari’s prison was requested from his family on Wednesday, and according to his wife, he had been transferred to solitary confinement.
In 2019, the ex-Iranian deputy defence minister was detained and found guilty of spying for the UK, a charge he vigorously rejected. The UK has pleaded with Iran to put an end to his execution and release him right away.
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, issued a warning on Friday, saying, “Iran must not follow through their brutal threat of execution.”
“This is a politically motivated act by a barbaric regime that has total disregard for human life,” Mr Claverly tweeted.
Former Iranian defence ministry employee Akbari had been charged with spying, which he vigorously disputed. The Associated Press reported that the country’s judiciary-affiliated news agency in Iran claimed he had been executed.
This Monday, Iran published a video of Mr Akbari that seemed to be his coerced confessions.
United States envoy Vedant Patel stated that “his execution would be unconscionable” in support of appeals for Iran not to carry out Mr Akbari’s death.
On Friday, Mr Patel claimed that “Alireza Akbari’s charges and sentencing were politically motivated.”
Accusations and forced audio
According to Mr Akbari’s voice message, a senior Iranian official who was engaged in nuclear negotiations with international powers encouraged him to visit Iran a few years ago when he was abroad.
A bottle of perfume and a shirt, he continues, were allegedly exchanged for top-secret intelligence from Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
Mr Akbari claimed that he spent “more than 3,500 hours” being interrogated and abused by intelligence operatives.
In addition, he claimed that Iran wanted to execute him “to exact revenge on the UK.”
In the hours that followed the release of the audio message, the Iranian news agency officially announced that Mr Akbari had been convicted of espionage and that the Supreme Court had denied his request to appeal the conviction.
Since the UK placed sanctions on Iran’s senior security officials and members of the morality police in reaction to that nation’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protestors, relations between the two countries have gotten worse.
