Word: rassam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Following on the heels of an unprecedented mass trial of 100 opposition figures a week ago, Saturday's session at Tehran's Revolutionary Court focused on the British embassy's chief political analyst, Hossein Rassam; a local staff member of the French embassy, Nazak Afshar; and a 24-year-old French teacher, Clotilde Reisse, who was working and studying in Isfahan, according to IRNA, Iran's official news agency. In a vague and rambling indictment, the three were charged with espionage and "acting against the national security," and for inciting "riots." It went on to blame a litany of Western...
...trial will no doubt bring further condemnation from the international community. Indeed, the British embassy was stunned that Rassam had been put on trial: he had been released from the notorious Evin prison on July 19 on $100,000 bail. But the regime's judicial maneuvers aren't being staged for an overseas audience, even as it blames foreign powers for trying to topple the government; rather, Saturday's trial was part of an aggressive strategy to unite its power base, the coalition of conservative clerics in Qum and the Tehran-based commanders of the country's sprawling security apparatus...
...previous trial, confessions were recited. Rassam, the British embassy's most senior Iranian employee, admitted to his involvement in the plot, according to IRNA, one of the few state news agencies permitted to attend the closed proceedings. He said the embassy had a budget of $500,000 to finance opposition groups and political activists and that he personally contacted the office of thwarted presidential candidate and now leading opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the run-up to the election. He also admitted that a local staffer wore green, the color of Mousavi's campaign, to one of the demonstrations...
...British embassy, due to its hostile policies in Iran and fear of exposure of its contacts inside Iran, employed local staff to establish such contacts," Rassam was quoted as saying. "I established such contacts based on orders from embassy officials." The admissions of gathering intelligence on the demonstrations and opposition movement, according to the prosecutors, amount to espionage...