Iran may have used a secret cable published by whistleblower website WikiLeaks to target and hang an alleged Israeli spy.

The disturbing development emerged after the alleged spy, kickboxer Majid Jamali Fashi, was executed in Tehran on Tuesday for assassinating an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010.

Although WikiLeaks redacted the name of the intelligence source on a leaked US diplomatic cable, it published a description of him as 'a licensed martial arts coach and trainer', writing from Azerbaijan.



Scroll down for video...

Majid Jamali Fashi, 24, was hanged at Tehran's Evin Prison after being sentenced to death in August last year

Killed: Nuclear scientist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi was assassinated in January 2010

According to a report yesterday, Fashi, 24, had visited Azerbaijan for a kickboxing tournament just days before the cable was sent.

Experts said they believe the US Embassy document could have raised Iranian suspicions.



The file detailed a US diplomat’s debriefing of the source, who told how the Iranian regime put pressure on martial arts clubs to train members of the Revolutionary Guards and used them to put down the popular uprising three years ago.



The damage caused by the blast that killed Iranian scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in Tehran A remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle outside the scientist's home in Tehran. Iran blamed it on Mossad

It did not refer to the Israelis or any plot to kill a nuclear scientist. But Fashi was arrested and charged days after the cable was published in December 2010.

Tehran said the kickboxer confessed to murdering Massoud Ali-Mohammadi on behalf of Mossad, Israel's secret service, in January 2010 using a remote-control bomb put on the scientist's motorcycle.

THE DEADLY TIT-FOR-TAT COVERT WAR BETWEEN IRAN AND ISRAEL Last month, Iranian intelligence officials said they had arrested 15 people they called a 'major terror and sabotage network with links to the Zionist regime'.



The group had plotted to assassinate an Iranian scientist in February, the authorities said.



Iranian officials have also accused Israel of infiltrating neighbouring Azerbaijan to organise attacks against the Islamic Republic.



Unsubstantiated reports in the Iranian media earlier this month said Israel has pushed for the transfer of 1,200 members of the exiled Iranian rebel group Mujahideen Khalq Organisation from their base in Iraq to Azerbaijan.



Late last year Israel distanced itself from the MKO's efforts to be removed from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, saying it did not consider the group to be 'an asset'.



Iran denies Western accusations it is seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability, but major powers are pushing Tehran to become more transparent and cooperative ahead of talks later this month.



Israel says it could attack Iran if it thinks that is the only way to stop it from getting nuclear arms.



British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned yesterday the European Union would impose tougher sanctions on Iran if it failed to take concrete steps to allay international concerns over its nuclear programme.



Birmingham University professor Scott Lucas, an authority on Iran, said yesterday that Tehran could have become suspicious about Fashi because of the cable.

He added: 'Alternatively it could have been used as a pretext against him; to set him up as a person who could take the fall for the assassination.'

Ali Ansari, head of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, said: 'I have always considered the release of the WikiLeaks files, without consideration for those consciously or unconsciously named in them, to be grotesquely irresponsible.'

WikiLeaks had no comment on the report yesterday. Israel has always denied any role in the scientist’s killing.

