Amir Mirzaei Hekmati is a former American military serviceman of Iranian descent who was imprisoned in Iran in August 2011.

In January 2012 he was sentenced to death by an Iranian court on charges of spying for the central intelligence Agency.

He was the first American to receive a death sentence in Iran since the Islamic Revolution more than 30 years ago ushered in the estrangement in American-Iranian relations that has reached new levels of tension in recent months. Mr.

Hekmati’s family in the United States has insisted he is no spy and was merely visiting family in Iran.

Mr. Hekmati had been charged by prosecutors with receiving espionage training at American bases in Afghanistan and Iraq before infiltrating Iran.

Mr. Hekmati’s detention became public in December 2011, when Iranian state television broadcast video of him. It identified him as an American-born Iranian-American from Arizona. In the video, the man identified as Mr. Hekmati said he joined the United States Army after graduating from high school in 2001, served in Iraq and received training in languages and espionage.

In the televised confession, Mr. Hekmati was shown speaking in fluent English and Persian. He said he was a C.I.A. operative sent to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry.

He said he was sent to Iran by the C.I.A. to gain the trust of the Iranian authorities by handing over information, some misleading and some accurate. If his first mission was successful, he said he was told, there would be more missions.

The claims in the video could not be verified at the time. The C.I.A. declined to comment after the broadcast on Dec. 18.

Iranian officials said their agents had identified him at the American-run Bagram air base in Afghanistan and tracked him as he infiltrated Iran. Mr. Hekmati’s family in the United States told American news media that he had traveled to Iran to visit his grandmothers and was not a spy.

This article was taken from www.nytimes.com