LONDON: Iranian authorities have barred the family of an executed British national from seeing the man’s body or burying him in his birthplace of Shiraz.

Alireza Akbari, who served as Iran’s deputy defense minister from 2000 to 2005, was executed on Saturday, three years on from his arrest, after being found guilty of spying for MI6.

Details surrounding the execution have been confused by conflicting details. Reports on Thursday, which were swiftly denied, suggested Akbari had been executed.

The family were then informed that the sentence would be carried out on Saturday as Friday was a public holiday in Iran, while also being misled into believing there was the possibility of a reprieve.

They then awoke on Saturday morning to a statement from the judicial news agency announcing the execution had been conducted.

The Guardian reported that negotiations then ensued over collecting the body, with the family required to agree that he would be buried quietly in a specifically marked spot in a Tehran cemetery.

But when Akbari’s Tehran-based sister and daughter went to collect the body on Monday, they were told by authorities that a man with the same name and details had already been buried on Thursday and that there was no body to collect.  

One family member said: “We have never seen the body. We do not know if he is in that grave site. We do not know if he was executed on Thursday or Sunday, or even if the talk of parole was just to string us along. Perhaps even we do not know if he is dead or alive, because we cannot access the grave.”

The family member added: “They are just playing with us. It is cruel and heartless. They have tried to destroy his reputation by fabricating that he is a traitor, and now this.”

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly described the actions of Iran’s authorities as “deeply distressing.”

Addressing the House of Commons, Cleverly told MPs that Akbari had been tortured to make him confess to spying, stating: “He fell victim to the political vendettas of a vicious regime … (The Iranian regime) thinks nothing of using the death penalty to silence dissent and settle internal scores.”