charges.
The court action effectively pulls the rug out from under a year of regime propaganda accusing Britain of having a major role in launching the post-election protests.
On Sunday, “The appeals court dropped espionage charges for which Hossain Ressam was sentenced to four years in prison,” his lawyer, Babak Farahi, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
“He was sentenced to one year in jail—suspended for five years—for propaganda against the establishment … as he had no previous record and held no managerial posts,” the lawyer said. The suspension means he can now go free and will serve no jail time if he doesn’t have another run-in with the law in the next five years.
The court “upheld a previous ruling that bans him from working for foreign embassies for five years,” the lawyer said.
Ressam, 45, was the UK embassy’s chief political analyst. He was arrested in June 2009 along with eight other local employees of the mission on charges of taking part in the protests after the re-election of President Ahmadi-nejad that month.
The eight were later freed and Ressam was released on bail after three weeks. But he was later paraded on television as part of a mass trial in August 2009 and later handed the four-year jail term amid protests from Britain and the European Union.