News

TEHRAN —A judge has sentenced a US-Iranian man to death for spying for the CIA, a report said Monday, exacerbating Tehran-Washington tensions already high because of Western sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Amir Mirzai Hekmati, a 28-year-old former Marine born in the United States, was "sentenced to death for cooperating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism," the Fars news agency said, quoting a verdict by the Revolutionary Court judge in Tehran.

Hekmati, born to an Iranian immigrant family living in the US, was shown on state television in mid-December saying in fluent Farsi and English that he was a Central Intelligence Agency operative sent to infiltrate Iran's intelligence ministry.