A man charged with spying by the Iranian government has been sentenced to death in Iran. Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd was accused of gathering intelligence for the CIA about former Quds force leader General Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in January.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Iran to release its U.S. detainees after a successful prisoner exchange between the two countries took place last week. Pompeo demanded that Iranian officials release three more prisoners whom he said had been wrongfully detained by the Iranian government.
A senior judge went on trial for large-scale corruption. Akbar Tabari, a former executive deputy of Iran’s judiciary, was accused of spearheading a network which accepted money, land and luxury apartments in return for influence over legal cases and judicial procedures.
An Iranian cleric on trial in Iran has been targeted by Iranian activists in Europe. Judge Gholamreza Mansouri who is believed to have traveled to Germany, has been accused of financial corruption by the Iranian government. Press freedom monitoring body Reporters Without Borders (RSF) asked German authorities to arrest Mansouri for censoring and jailing dozens of Iranian journalists.
U.S. sanctions on Iran’s shipping network, which the Trump Administration said was being used to proliferate nuclear weapons, went into effect. The sanctions target the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and a Shanghai-based subsidiary, E-Sail Shipping Company Ltd (E-Sail), affecting a total of 121 tankers, cargo ships, and other vessels.
Iranian officials said they would send the Ukraine airliner’s black boxes to Paris for analysis once every country involved in the investigation agreed. The black boxes belong to a passenger jet which was accidentally shot down by Iranian security forces in January, killing all 176 people on board. Ukraine, Canada and the United States are involved in the ongoing investigation. Canada had previously asked Iran to send the recording devices to France so that data contained in the boxes about the crash could be extracted.
And the Iranian government may have to close several of its foreign language media arms, as U.S. sanctions, financial mismanagement and a drop in viewing figures impacted the news agencies’ operations. Channels which face closure include the state’s English-language Press TV and Arabic news outlet Al-Alam.
