Iran Executes Man Convicted of Spying on US-Slain General

In this picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, worshippers chant slogans during Friday prayers ceremony, as a banner show Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, left, and Iraqi Shiite senior militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone attack on Jan. 3, and a banner which reads in Persian: "Death To America, "at Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 17, 2020. Iran's supreme leader said in his sermons President Donald Trump is a "clown" who only pretends to support the Iranian people but will "push a poisonous dagger" into their backs, as he struck a defiant tone in his first Friday sermon in Tehran in eight years. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran executed a man convicted of providing information to the United States and Israel about a prominent Revolutionary Guard general later killed by a U.S. drone strike, state TV reported on Monday.

The report said the death sentence was carried out against Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, without elaborating.

The country’s judiciary had said in June that Majd was “linked to the CIA and the Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency, and alleged that Majd shared security information on the Guard and its expeditionary unit, called the Quds, or Jerusalem Force, which Qassem Soleimani commanded.

Soleimani was killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad in January.

The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and five others.

Iran later retaliated for Soleimani’s killing with a ballistic missile strike targeting US forces in Iraq. That same night, the Guard accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner in Tehran, killing 176 people.

Categories / Criminal, International

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