*TEHRAN: *An Iranian woman employee of the British Council has beensentenced to 10 years in prison for “spying”, the judiciary’s newswebsite *MizanOnline* reported on Monday.
“An Iranian citizen in charge of the Iran desk at the… British Council wascooperating with English spying agencies,” *Mizan* reported, quotingjudiciary spokesperson Gholam hossein Esmaili.
He did not identify the suspect but said she had been sentenced recentlyafter she “made a straightforward confession”.
Esmaili added that the suspect, who had been tasked with drawing up andmanaging cultural “infiltration” projects, had been arrested by Iranianintelligence and security agencies “more than a year ago”.
Britain’s foreign ministry voiced concern over the case.
“We are very concerned by reports that an Iranian British Council employeehas been sentenced to jail on charges of espionage,” a spokesperson for theForeign and Commonwealth Office said.
“British Embassy officials in Tehran are in touch with the Iraniangovernment to seek further information.”
The British Council, a cultural and educational organisation with branchesaround the world, said in a statement that “it does not have offices orrepresentatives in Iran, and does not do any work in Iran”.
Iranian authorities shut down the British Council’s office in Tehran morethan a decade ago for what Esmaili described as “illegal activities”.
Esmaili said that during her confession, the suspect described how she hadbeen recruited, telling investigators about her instructions from the“English security agency”.
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The spokesperson said she was “an Iranian student who wanted to live andwork in the UK”, was hired by the British Council and “repeatedly travelledto Iran under aliases… and made connections with artistic and theatregroups”.
A London-based British Council employee, Aras Amiri, was arrested in Iranin 2018 during a trip to visit relatives.
It was not immediately clear if she was the person whose sentencing wasannounced on Monday.
The “safety and wellbeing (of colleagues) remain our first concern… We arein close contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,” the BritishCouncil said.
“We are a non-political organisation committed to people-to-peopleengagement, and our staff are not connected to any espionage agency.”
The sentencing comes amid tensions between Iran and Britain over the fateof British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was arrested byIranian authorities in 2016 as she was leaving Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was puton trial and is now serving a five-year jail sentence for allegedly tryingto topple the Iranian government. -APP/AFP
