Austrian Citizen Sentenced to Seven and a Half Years Prison in Iran

PeopleOther ♦ Published: February 21, 2023; 23:25 ♦ (Vindobona)

An Austrian citizen was sentenced to seven and a half years in Iran for alleged espionage against the Iranian government. This was the third case of allegations of this kind against Austrian citizens.

Iran Has Arrested an Austrian Citizen Accusing him of Espionage for the Third Time since 2016 / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / Erich Schmid, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

An Austrian arrested in October in Iran has been sentenced to prison. The Austrian citizen was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for alleged “espionage” yesterday, the Foreign Ministry said. The Iranian ambassador was therefore cited to the Foreign Ministry, where "our unmistakable protest against the judgment was told," it said, according to ORF.

With good behavior, the Foreign Ministry announced two years of the imposed prison sentence would be suspended, which stressed that it has been in regular contact with the family since the arrest became known. Thanks to intensive efforts, three visits to the prison have taken place so far, during which the Austrian ambassador to Iran was able to meet the man, it said.

The man had been arrested in Iran in mid-October of the previous year. The arrest was not related to the protests in Iran. Unlike in the case of two other Austrians imprisoned in Iran, the man now convicted is not a dual citizen, but only has Austrian citizenship, as reported by ORF

According to Volksblatt, the two Austrian-Iranian dual citizens had also been sentenced to years in prison for alleged espionage. The Viennese IT expert Kamran Ghaderi has therefore already been in prison in Tehran since 2016. The secretary general of the Austrian-Iranian Society Massud Mossaheb, who was arrested during a visit to Tehran in early 2019, was granted medical leave in November for health reasons.