Tehran (dpa) – Iranian-US citizen Amir-Mirza Hekmati, arrested in Iran last week on charges of working as an agent for the US Central Intelligence Agency, is set to face trial Tuesday on espionage charges. Fars news agency reported that Hekmati confessed to having been deceived by the CIA into spying on Iran, but never intended to harm the Islamic state. Fars further quoted the 28-year-old Hekmati as saying that he planned to stay in Iran and not return to the US. Hekmati had been provided with a lawyer, Fars reported. Hekmati's father, Ali Hekmati, who lives in Detroit, said his son was just in Iran to visit relatives and was detained in September. Tehran disclosed the arrest in mid-December. The father further denied that his son was working for the CIA. The US State Department called on the Iranian government to allow Hekmati to get consular assistance via the Swiss embassy, which represents US interests in Tehran, as the countries have no diplomatic relations, and release him without delay. The man said last week on state television in good Persian that he was a CIA agent and trained in military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq before being dispatched to Iran to infiltrate Iranian secret service. He was supposed to win the trust of the Iranian secret service with classified CIA intelligence data, he said. Iran frequently announces the arrest of spies and espionage rings linked to the US or Israel – and on several occasions has also played video confessions by the alleged spies – but without presenting any evidence. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/yVQgW Tags: CIA, Spy, Tehran, Trial, US Section: Iran, Latest News
