2 More Admit Spying for Israel, Iran Says

Two more defendants confessed Monday in the trial of 13 Iranian Jews accused of spying for Israel, officials said, while their lawyers were shown the state’s evidence for the first time in the closed-door proceedings.

The new confessions raise to five the number of defendants who reportedly have admitted to espionage. But defense lawyers have questioned the admissions before Iran’s Revolutionary Court, where there is no jury and the judge also is the prosecutor.

Western nations also have expressed concern about the fairness of the proceedings, while Israel has denied the spying charges.

In the southern city of Shiraz on Monday, defendant Nasser Levihaim told the court that he was the No. 2 man of the spy ring and asked for clemency, provincial judiciary chief Hossein Ali Amiri said. Amiri would not identify a ringleader.

Levihaim, 50, who worked for the national power company, was motivated by ideological reasons and “love for the Promised Land,” defense lawyer Esmail Naseri said after the closed hearing.

“He said he held a position of authority and was not responsible for gathering information himself,” Naseri said.

Ramin Farzam, a 27-year-old store clerk, appeared before the court for the first time Monday to say he was paid by the Jewish state to spy but was caught before he could relay any information.

Anxious relatives waited outside the courthouse in Shiraz, about 420 miles south of the capital, Tehran, as Farzam, Levihaim and defendant Shahrokh Paknahad, who confessed last week, attended the session.

Paknahad, 30, told reporters Monday that he sent information he had gathered to Israel either by “transmission equipment” of an unspecified kind or through Iranian Jews clandestinely traveling to Israel.

“The court’s treatment has been fair,” Paknahad said. “I was not beaten, and I was not under pressure during the investigation and trial. My confessions were voluntary.”

In a recording broadcast on state-run Tehran television Monday, Paknahad, a religion teacher, said his missions were “to recruit new agents to spy for Israel and collecting information for sabotage.” Unshaven and wearing a gray prison suit, he said he collected information during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war when he was completing military service, mandatory for all Iranians.

Another defendant, shoe salesman Hamid Tefilin, has said he spied for Israel, and a fifth, store clerk Ramin Nematizadeh, confessed in court, his lawyer said.