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Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri speaks to journalists in Tehran in this file photo taken July 15, 2010.RAHEB HOMAVANDI/Reuters

Iran executed a nuclear scientist convicted of spying for the United States, an official said Sunday, acknowledging for the first time that the country secretly detained and tried a man who was once heralded as a hero.

Shahram Amiri defected to the United States at the height of Western efforts to thwart Iran's nuclear program. When he returned to Iran in 2010, he was welcomed with flowers by government leaders and even went on Iranian talk shows. Then, he mysteriously disappeared.

He was apparently hanged last week, the same week that Tehran executed a group of militants, a year after Iran agreed to a landmark accord to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Mr. Amiri first vanished in 2009 while on a religious pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia. A year later, he reappeared in a series of contradictory online videos filmed in the United States. He then walked into the Iranian-interests section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home.

In interviews, he described being kidnapped and held against his will by Saudi and American spies. U.S. officials said he was to receive millions of dollars for his help in understanding Iran's nuclear program.

Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi said Mr. Amiri "had access to the country's secret and classified information" and "had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan."

The spokesman told journalists that Mr. Amiri had been tried in a death-penalty case that was upheld by an appeals court. He did not explain why authorities never announced the conviction, though he said Mr. Amiri had access to lawyers.

News about Mr. Amiri, born in 1977, has been scant since his return to Iran. Last year, his father told the BBC's Farsi-language service that his son had been held at a secret site. Mr. Ejehi said Mr. Amiri's family mistakenly believed he received a 10-year prison sentence.

On Tuesday, Iran announced it had executed a number of criminals, describing them mainly as militants from the country's Kurdish minority. Then, an obituary notice for Mr. Amiri circulated in his hometown of Kermanshah, a city some 500 kilometres southwest of Tehran, according to the Iranian pro-reform daily newspaper Shargh.

Manoto, a private satellite television channel based in London believed to be run by those who back Iran's ousted shah, reported Saturday that Mr. Amiri had been executed. BBC Farsi also quoted Mr. Amiri's mother saying her son's neck bore ligature marks suggesting he had been hanged by the state.

The Associated Press could not immediately reach Mr. Amiri's family.

Mr. Amiri's case indirectly found its way back into the spotlight in the United States last year with the release of State Department e-mails sent and received by Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee.

His disappearance came as Western countries stepped up efforts to impede Iran's nuclear program under the government of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The United States actively tried to recruit nuclear scientists to defect. Later, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated between 2010 and 2012, and Iran blamed the slayings on Israel and the West.

The Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, disrupted thousands of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran.

In June, 2010, a shaky online video emerged of Mr. Amiri saying he had been kidnapped by American and Saudi agents and was in Tucson.

A short time later, he appeared in a professionally shot online video near a chess set, saying he wanted to earn a doctorate in America and return to Iran if an "opportunity of safe travel" presented itself. His wife and son remained behind in Iran.

"I have not done any activity against my homeland," he said. But soon, another clip contradicted that, and he appeared at the Pakistani embassy.

Ms. Clinton, who was then the secretary of state, stressed that Mr. Amiri had been in America "of his own free will."

"He is free to go," she said.

U.S. officials at the time told the Associated Press that Mr. Amiri was paid $5-million to offer the CIA information about Iran's nuclear program, though he left the country without the money. They said Mr. Amiri, who ran a radiation-detection program in Iran, travelled to the United States and stayed there for months by choice.

Analysts abroad suggested Iranian authorities may have threatened Mr. Amiri's family back in Iran, forcing him to return.

On his return from the United States, Mr. Amiri was greeted at the airport by high-ranking government officials and was invited to TV talk shows where he explained how he bypassed a U.S. trap to get home. Many newspapers published accounts of his return on their front pages and some suggested a movie be made from his story.

He said Saudi and American officials had kidnapped him while he visited the Saudi holy city of Medina. He also said Israeli agents were present at his interrogations and that that CIA officers offered him $50-million to remain in America.

"I was under the harshest mental and physical torture," he said.

The release of the Clinton e-mails came amid criticism of Ms. Clinton's use of a private account and server that has persisted into her campaign against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

An e-mail forwarded to Ms. Clinton by senior adviser Jake Sullivan on July 5, 2010 – just nine days before Mr. Amiri returned to Tehran – appears to reference the scientist.

"We have a diplomatic, 'psychological' issue, not a legal one. Our friend has to be given a way out," the e-mail by Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read. "Our person won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave, so be it."

Another e-mail, sent by Mr. Sullivan on July 12, 2010, appears to obliquely refer to the scientist just hours before his appearance at the Pakistani embassy became widely known.

"The gentleman … has apparently gone to his country's interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure," Mr. Sullivan wrote. "This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours."

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