Iran slams US jailing of engineer for documents smuggling

Marzieh Afkham told reporters on Sunday that many other Iranian nationals had faced unfounded charges of violating sanctions against Iran; “during recent years, diplomatic dynamism has been in action addressing their release and to persuade the courts that they have been innocent”, Afkham added. In addition to Pratt, Khazaee had been employed by General Electric and Rolls-Royce.

He was accused of seeking to export 1,500 documents containing trade secrets and 600 documents with sensitive defense technology.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned as completely unjust a sentence issued against an Iranian national in the United States, Press TV reported.

Khazaee was sentenced Friday to more than eight years in prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine for trying to send hundreds of sensitive USA military documents to Iran as he applied for teaching jobs at state-run universities there.

Khazaee was arrested last January after being accused of attempting such transfer. In one email Khazaee asserted that the material he was delivering was “very controlled … and I am taking [a] big risk”.

“In materials that Dr. Khazaee sent to multiple state-controlled technical universities in Iran, Dr. Khazaee stated that as “lead engineer” in various projects with US defense contractors, he had acquired material and learned ‘key technique(s) that could be transferred to our own industry and universities, ‘” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.

After growing up in Iran, Khazaee came to the U.S.to attend the University of Oklahoma.

Federal authorities intercepted the shipment.

The U.S. Justice Department says an analyses by the U.S. Air Force concluded that the “technical data that Khazaee stole would have helped Iran “leap forward” 10 years or more in academic and military turbine engine research and development”.