WikiLeaks cable 'led Iran to hang kick-boxer it claims was Israeli spy who assassinated nuclear scientist'
Iran may have used a secret cable published by whistleblower website WikiLeaks to target and hang an alleged Israeli spy.
The disturbing development emerged after the alleged spy, kickboxer Majid Jamali Fashi, was executed in Tehran on Tuesday for assassinating an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010.
Although WikiLeaks redacted the name of the intelligence source on a leaked US diplomatic cable, it published a description of him as 'a licensed martial arts coach and trainer', writing from Azerbaijan.
According to a report yesterday, Fashi, 24, had visited Azerbaijan for a kickboxing tournament just days before the cable was sent.
Experts said they believe the US Embassy document could have raised Iranian suspicions.
The file detailed a US diplomat’s debriefing of the source, who told how the Iranian regime put pressure on martial arts clubs to train members of the Revolutionary Guards and used them to put down the popular uprising three years ago.
It did not refer to the Israelis or any plot to kill a nuclear scientist. But Fashi was arrested and charged days after the cable was published in December 2010.
Tehran said the kickboxer confessed to murdering Massoud Ali-Mohammadi on behalf of Mossad, Israel's secret service, in January 2010 using a remote-control bomb put on the scientist's motorcycle.
Birmingham University professor Scott Lucas, an authority on Iran, said yesterday that Tehran could have become suspicious about Fashi because of the cable.
He added: 'Alternatively it could have been used as a pretext against him; to set him up as a person who could take the fall for the assassination.'
Ali Ansari, head of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, said: 'I have always considered the release of the WikiLeaks files, without consideration for those consciously or unconsciously named in them, to be grotesquely irresponsible.'
WikiLeaks had no comment on the report yesterday. Israel has always denied any role in the scientist’s killing.