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October 14, 2010

Iranian prosecutors said Wednesday that they would put five people on trial for espionage, accusing them of passing secrets about the country’s space program, economy and defense systems to unspecified enemies of the nation. “The cases of these five spies will be referred to the judiciary soon,” the prosecutor general, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said in remarks reported by the semiofficial Fars news agency. Although he did not identify the enemies to whom the defendants are accused of passing information, often uses the word to refer to the United States and Israel. Iran said last week that several people had been arrested on suspicion of spying on its nuclear program, but it was not clear whether the five defendants who were cited on Wednesday were the same suspects. Espionage can be punishable by execution in Iran.