Did Iran coerce another innocent man's confession to pamper its pride?
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Mahmoud Mousavi Majd is haggard but smartly dressed for his video confession, occasionally closing his eyes in recollection as he recounts his crimes. There are no visible signs of torture on his body when he speaks to the camera, no clear signs of coercion in his speech.
Majd's confession to espionage was broadcast by an official Iranian TV channel on Monday morning, the same morning he was executed by the country's authorities on charges of spying for the CIA. But instead of confirming his guilt, the video raised concerns that he was forced to confess to a crime he knew he would be executed for.
Majd was sentenced to death for allegedly providing intelligence to the CIA while in Syria about the movement of slain General Qasem Soleimani, Iran's judiciary spokesperson Gholam Hossein Esmaili announced on June 9. Soleimani's assassination by American drone strike almost eight months ago sparked fury in Tehran, and authorities have vowed to capture and punish those involved in his killing.
The 20 minute, 54 second video recorded by IRIBNEWS purportedly contained Majd's confessions to the crimes he was charged with, including contact with at least eight CIA operatives. In footage accompanying the confession, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked channel praised the efforts of IRGC intelligence in uncovering a "sophisticated" operation by the CIA to track Soleimani, an operation in which Majd was instrumental.
However, the chopped and spliced nature of the video's narrative leaves Majd's confession incoherent and wrought with contradiction – suggesting there could be other motives behind the silencing of the young Iranian.
Majd's confession marked a considerable change from his public messages released earlier on in his detention, in which he categorically denied any involvement in Soleimani's death. In an audio message circulated online by his friends, Majd referred to Soleimani as a "martyr," and said he would be happy to appear in a public hearing to refute the allegations.
"I have been in detention since 10 September 2018, and I have nothing to do with the killing of Soleimani," Majd said in the audio, both in Persian and in Arabic. "I have not received a fair trial, and my repeated complaints went unheeded."
In the message, Majd warned that powerful people within the IRGC wanted him dead, to cover their tracks and "to protect their personal interests and the main culprits of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination."
HRANA, a reputable human rights organization reported that Majd's family was repeatedly mistreated and threatened by IRGC intelligence operatives to prevent them from speaking out about his detention.
Majd's alleged collusion with the Americans began in Syria, the country of his upbringing. According to the report, Majd's merchant father moved his family to Syria in the 1990s. There, Majd went to school and became fluent in Arabic and English, and appeared to have travelled across the country. Prior to 2011, Majd started working as a translator in a company whose management was "connected to the Iranian forces," the report claims, without specifying the kind of company he worked for. Majd's family returned to Iran when Syria's civil war began in 2011, but he stayed put. "He became close to the top managers, and because of his friendship, soon he was promoted from a translator to the person in charge of the company's investigation."
"Mousavi Majd was able to get closer to Iran because of the commercial ties of the companies that he worked for. His ability to speak Arabic and awareness of Syrian geography brought him closer to the Iranian advisory units in Syria, and he was given responsibility in groups with a fighting presence from Idlib to Latakia. He was not an organizational member of the IRGC, but he did gain access to many sensitive locations as a translator for them," the report's voiceover said.
Majd's "suspicious behavior" was picked up by IRGC intelligence, and he was placed under surveillance. Selfies with groups of girls and a photo of him purportedly drinking alcohol are cut together in incriminating montage.
Between 2011 and President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017, a CIA operative initiated the first alleged contact with Majd, who was operating alongside the IRGC's Quds Force in Syria. This first contact was followed by multiple other communications with at least seven CIA operatives according to the report, which fails to offer timings of contact within the six-year window.
IRGC intelligence were aware of contact between Majd and the alleged CIA operatives, as well as with Mossad operatives, the report said – yet the IRGC did nothing as Majd purportedly proceeded to provide bewildering amount of "sensitive" information to the CIA.
"Mousavi Majd provided a lot of intelligence to the Americans, including information about [Iranian] advisory units, telecommunication systems, military equipment, identifying the commanders including their phone numbers, the movement of commanders including martyr Qasem Soleimani, and the geographical location of important infrastructure and the deciphering of books."
Majd is seen on Iranian TV confessing to having received thousands of dollars from the Americans, until a CIA operative tells him the new US administration would expect him to perform higher-risk tasks for limited pay. He then claims that he had been fired from the Iranian forces in Syria before the CIA operative tried to recruit him for higher-risk tasks.
"So I said if I were to do these things the risks would go up and I would be endangered, even though I had been fired and had no position ... I said, 'So my salary would go up? ...He said 'no...my managers have asked me to tell you that from now on your monthly salary is 3,000 dollars, and maybe we will increase it as we go forward'. I said that I could not work for 3,000 dollars at this high a risk."
Majd claims in the video that he stopped working after being fired from the Iranian forces, and that no one bothered him until he decided to go back to Syria and try to make more money by working with other intelligence services. Majd's statement contradicts the IRGC claim that he was closely monitored from the moment he contacted the CIA.
The report claims that Majd left the CIA in search of better pay from the Israeli and Saudi Arabian intelligence services. He was detained in 2017, the report said, after contacting Saudi intelligence seven times and receiving no answer. According to HRANA, it was not IRGC Intelligence, but Lebanese Hezbollah that first detained him, and in 2018, while he was a Masters student of sociology at the American University of Beirut (AUB).
Towards the end of the video, the voiceover claims that Majd's detention was a "decisive blow" to the intelligence services of Iran's enemies.
The report then contradicts its own statement earlier on in the video that Majd was detained in 2017, later saying he was detained one year before Qasem Soleimani's assassination. Rudaw English contacted AUB to verify if he had been a student at the alleged times of arrest, but "Mahmoud Mousavi Majd's name did not show up in AUB records," the university communications office said via email.
Majd was tortured for two and a half months by Hezbollah operatives, HRANA said, before he was handed over to IRGC Intelligence's infamously impunity-free Detention 59 unit. It is not clear if he was kept at the unit's centre until his execution.
Televised confessions are a favorite method of the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence to establish guilt. State media broadcast more than 860 forced confessions and defamatory content between 2009 and 2019 according to a recent report by Justice4Iran, a London-based human rights organization.
Former Iran prisoner Saeed Malekpour spent almost 11 years in and Iranian prison before his release in 2019. In an interview with Iranian rights activist Masih Alinejad, posted to her official social media on Tuesday, Malekpour detailed how he was forced to appear on camera and confess under duress to setting up a pornography site, a crime for which he was sentenced to death.
"They kept me in solitary for 195 days...the IRGC intelligence would take me out to an office called 'technical office' where they did most of the filming. They would beat me up in the basement, they would make threats and they would say 'look, what happens is not important, whatever happens we can just say he tried to escape on the way here and we emptied a bullet and killed him'."
"I don't know which Organisation he [the cameraman] belonged to, IRIB or somewhere else, but he would say, 'Look, I'm here for a few days, I will get what I want, and won't let you go until I get what I want. He was like an interrogator; there was no difference between him and the interrogator."
Majd's confession to espionage was broadcast by an official Iranian TV channel on Monday morning, the same morning he was executed by the country's authorities on charges of spying for the CIA. But instead of confirming his guilt, the video raised concerns that he was forced to confess to a crime he knew he would be executed for.
Majd was sentenced to death for allegedly providing intelligence to the CIA while in Syria about the movement of slain General Qasem Soleimani, Iran's judiciary spokesperson Gholam Hossein Esmaili announced on June 9. Soleimani's assassination by American drone strike almost eight months ago sparked fury in Tehran, and authorities have vowed to capture and punish those involved in his killing.
The 20 minute, 54 second video recorded by IRIBNEWS purportedly contained Majd's confessions to the crimes he was charged with, including contact with at least eight CIA operatives. In footage accompanying the confession, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked channel praised the efforts of IRGC intelligence in uncovering a "sophisticated" operation by the CIA to track Soleimani, an operation in which Majd was instrumental.
However, the chopped and spliced nature of the video's narrative leaves Majd's confession incoherent and wrought with contradiction – suggesting there could be other motives behind the silencing of the young Iranian.
Majd's confession marked a considerable change from his public messages released earlier on in his detention, in which he categorically denied any involvement in Soleimani's death. In an audio message circulated online by his friends, Majd referred to Soleimani as a "martyr," and said he would be happy to appear in a public hearing to refute the allegations.
"I have been in detention since 10 September 2018, and I have nothing to do with the killing of Soleimani," Majd said in the audio, both in Persian and in Arabic. "I have not received a fair trial, and my repeated complaints went unheeded."
In the message, Majd warned that powerful people within the IRGC wanted him dead, to cover their tracks and "to protect their personal interests and the main culprits of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination."
HRANA, a reputable human rights organization reported that Majd's family was repeatedly mistreated and threatened by IRGC intelligence operatives to prevent them from speaking out about his detention.
Majd's alleged collusion with the Americans began in Syria, the country of his upbringing. According to the report, Majd's merchant father moved his family to Syria in the 1990s. There, Majd went to school and became fluent in Arabic and English, and appeared to have travelled across the country. Prior to 2011, Majd started working as a translator in a company whose management was "connected to the Iranian forces," the report claims, without specifying the kind of company he worked for. Majd's family returned to Iran when Syria's civil war began in 2011, but he stayed put. "He became close to the top managers, and because of his friendship, soon he was promoted from a translator to the person in charge of the company's investigation."
"Mousavi Majd was able to get closer to Iran because of the commercial ties of the companies that he worked for. His ability to speak Arabic and awareness of Syrian geography brought him closer to the Iranian advisory units in Syria, and he was given responsibility in groups with a fighting presence from Idlib to Latakia. He was not an organizational member of the IRGC, but he did gain access to many sensitive locations as a translator for them," the report's voiceover said.
Majd's "suspicious behavior" was picked up by IRGC intelligence, and he was placed under surveillance. Selfies with groups of girls and a photo of him purportedly drinking alcohol are cut together in incriminating montage.
Between 2011 and President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017, a CIA operative initiated the first alleged contact with Majd, who was operating alongside the IRGC's Quds Force in Syria. This first contact was followed by multiple other communications with at least seven CIA operatives according to the report, which fails to offer timings of contact within the six-year window.
IRGC intelligence were aware of contact between Majd and the alleged CIA operatives, as well as with Mossad operatives, the report said – yet the IRGC did nothing as Majd purportedly proceeded to provide bewildering amount of "sensitive" information to the CIA.
"Mousavi Majd provided a lot of intelligence to the Americans, including information about [Iranian] advisory units, telecommunication systems, military equipment, identifying the commanders including their phone numbers, the movement of commanders including martyr Qasem Soleimani, and the geographical location of important infrastructure and the deciphering of books."
Majd is seen on Iranian TV confessing to having received thousands of dollars from the Americans, until a CIA operative tells him the new US administration would expect him to perform higher-risk tasks for limited pay. He then claims that he had been fired from the Iranian forces in Syria before the CIA operative tried to recruit him for higher-risk tasks.
"So I said if I were to do these things the risks would go up and I would be endangered, even though I had been fired and had no position ... I said, 'So my salary would go up? ...He said 'no...my managers have asked me to tell you that from now on your monthly salary is 3,000 dollars, and maybe we will increase it as we go forward'. I said that I could not work for 3,000 dollars at this high a risk."
Majd claims in the video that he stopped working after being fired from the Iranian forces, and that no one bothered him until he decided to go back to Syria and try to make more money by working with other intelligence services. Majd's statement contradicts the IRGC claim that he was closely monitored from the moment he contacted the CIA.
The report claims that Majd left the CIA in search of better pay from the Israeli and Saudi Arabian intelligence services. He was detained in 2017, the report said, after contacting Saudi intelligence seven times and receiving no answer. According to HRANA, it was not IRGC Intelligence, but Lebanese Hezbollah that first detained him, and in 2018, while he was a Masters student of sociology at the American University of Beirut (AUB).
Towards the end of the video, the voiceover claims that Majd's detention was a "decisive blow" to the intelligence services of Iran's enemies.
The report then contradicts its own statement earlier on in the video that Majd was detained in 2017, later saying he was detained one year before Qasem Soleimani's assassination. Rudaw English contacted AUB to verify if he had been a student at the alleged times of arrest, but "Mahmoud Mousavi Majd's name did not show up in AUB records," the university communications office said via email.
Majd was tortured for two and a half months by Hezbollah operatives, HRANA said, before he was handed over to IRGC Intelligence's infamously impunity-free Detention 59 unit. It is not clear if he was kept at the unit's centre until his execution.
Televised confessions are a favorite method of the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence to establish guilt. State media broadcast more than 860 forced confessions and defamatory content between 2009 and 2019 according to a recent report by Justice4Iran, a London-based human rights organization.
Former Iran prisoner Saeed Malekpour spent almost 11 years in and Iranian prison before his release in 2019. In an interview with Iranian rights activist Masih Alinejad, posted to her official social media on Tuesday, Malekpour detailed how he was forced to appear on camera and confess under duress to setting up a pornography site, a crime for which he was sentenced to death.
"They kept me in solitary for 195 days...the IRGC intelligence would take me out to an office called 'technical office' where they did most of the filming. They would beat me up in the basement, they would make threats and they would say 'look, what happens is not important, whatever happens we can just say he tried to escape on the way here and we emptied a bullet and killed him'."
"I don't know which Organisation he [the cameraman] belonged to, IRIB or somewhere else, but he would say, 'Look, I'm here for a few days, I will get what I want, and won't let you go until I get what I want. He was like an interrogator; there was no difference between him and the interrogator."