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Iran scientist: CIA offered me $50 million to lie about nuclear secrets
An Iranian scientist who says he was abducted and taken to the United States by the CIA returned to Tehran yesterday to a hero's welcome and claimed that he had been pressured into lying about his country's nuclear program.
Shahram Amiri said that he was on the hajj pilgrimage when he was seized at gunpoint in the city of Medina, drugged and taken to the US, where he says Israel was involved in his interrogation. In the US, officials were reported to have admitted that Amiri was paid more than $5 million by the CIA for information about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The US claims to have received useful information from him in return for the money, but is clearly embarrassed by his very public return to Iran. The offer of a large bribe is reportedly part of a special US program to get Iranian nuclear scientists to defect.
Flashing a victory sign, Amiri returned to Tehran International Airport to be greeted by senior officials and by his tearful wife and seven-year-old son, whom he had not seen since he disappeared in Saudi Arabia during a visit 14 months ago. Iran said it was demanding information about what had happened to him.
The US says that he entered the US of his own free will and had relocated to Tucson, Arizona. The US is claiming that Amiri, who had worked for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, re-defected because pressure was placed on his family back in Iran, something he denied yesterday. Officials suggested that Iran had used his family to get him to leave the US.
"Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will, to use me for revealing some false information about Iran's nuclear work," Amiri said at Tehran airport.