TEHRAN: Iran on Friday hanged four people convicted of spying for arch foe Israel, the judiciary said, less than two weeks after authorities had executed a man on similar grounds.

“Four members of a sabotage group related to the Zionist regime (Israel)... were hanged this morning” in Iran’s northwestern province of West Azerb­aijan, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

It identified them as three men — Vafa Hanareh, Aram Omari and Rahman Parhazo — and one woman, Nasim Namazi, who had all been sentenced to death on charges of “moharebeh”, or waging war against God, and “corruption on Earth” through their “collaboration with the Zionist regime”.

The group “committed extensive actions against the country’s security under the guidance of the Mossad”, Israel’s spy agency, Mizan said.

Iran does not recognise Israel and the two countries have engaged in a shadow war for years. On December 16, a man also convicted of working for Mossad was executed in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

The judiciary at the time did not identify the man but said he had been convicted of “intelligence cooperation and espionage for the benefit for the hostile Zionist regime”.

The four were charged with kidnapping Iranian security forces to extract intelligence and were also accused of setting fire to the cars and apartments of some agents. Several others working with the same group were each sentenced to 10 years in jail, Mizan said, without providing additional details.

Iranian intelligence put the group under surveillance for at least four months, starting in January 2022 until their arrest that May, when they were “transferred from a neighbouring country” to Iran, according to the state-run news agency IRNA.

In December 2022, the Islamic republic hanged another four people who had been convicted of collaborating with Israel’s intelligence services.

Tehran accuses Israel of carrying out a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear programme.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2023