A former British Chancellor of the Exchequer says the former Iranian ambassador never met Alireza Akbari

LONDON, 18 Jan. (DPA/PA MEDIA/EP) –

A former UK Treasury minister, Lamont de Lerwick, assured this Wednesday, after speaking with the former British ambassador to Iran, Richard Dalton, that the diplomat never met the British-Iranian Alireza Akbari, accused of espionage and executed on Last week in Iran.

The IRNA news agency reported that the executed Akbari had meetings with an intelligence officer from the UK Intelligence Service, MI6, and former British ambassador Dalton.

However, according to the former finance minister, Dalton does not remember meeting Akbari, who alleged during his detention that he was tortured and interrogated for long periods, forcing him to make false confessions.

“The Iranian regime has suggested that Richard Dalton, our former ambassador to Iran, was the main British contact with Mr. Akbari. When I spoke to him 48 hours ago, he told me that, to his knowledge, he had never met Mr. Akbari in his life, neither here in London nor in Tehran”, he stressed in the upper house.

“Isn’t this yet another lie by the Iranian regime designed to instill in the Iranian people the myth that their problems are somehow caused by foreigners and not their own brutal incompetence?”

Dalton already claimed on Sunday that pressure to add the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the list of banned terrorist organizations could have played a role in Akbari’s death.

The Iranian Defense Ministry clarified that Akbari never became “number two” in the portfolio after the Iranian media reported that he had worked as deputy defense minister during the tenure of former President Mohammad Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005).