Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian will be tried on espionage charges for collecting economic and industrial information and selling it to unnamed Americans, the Fars news agency reported Sunday.
In the United States, both the State Department and The Washington Post called the allegation “absurd.”
The Fars report did not give any source for its information, but the Judiciary has not denied the Fars report in the two days since it appeared.
Fars said Rezaian is facing “security” charges and will stand trial in a Revolutionary Court, which mainly hears cases involving security offences.
Rezaian, along with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and two photojournalists, was detained last July 22. All were later released except Rezaian, who is a dual US-Iranian citizen.
The Fars report alleged Rezaian had obtained economic and industrial information from Iran and provided it to unnamed Americans, whom it said were “errand boys” for the US Treasury, Congress and the CIA.
Fars also linked Rezaian to Karim Sedjadpour, who works in Washington, DC, for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and to Omid Memarian, 41, an Iranian opposition journalist now based in the US. Memarian said he and Rezaian have been friends for many years since both worked as journalists in the San Francisco area.
“Selling Iran’s economic and industrial information at a time of sanctions is exactly like selling food to the enemy in time of war,” Fars alleged.
The Washington Post said, “Any charges of that sort would be absurd, the product of fertile and twisted imaginations,”
The State Department said, “If the [Fars] reports are true, these charges are absurd, should be immediately dismissed and Jason should be immediately freed so that he can return to his family.”
Hardliners in Iran earlier claimed Rezaian had access to sensitive information through contacts in the office of President Rohani. Fars did not repeat that allegation.