Tehran - Iran's Supreme Court has ratified the death sentence for Morteza Firoozi, a prominent newspaper editor convicted of spying.
Firoozi, a former editor-in-chief of the daily Iran News, has been in custody on spying charges since May. Iran has not named any country for which Firoozi was alleged to have spied, but Iranian newspapers which last year carried brief reports of his then rumoured arrest had said he was accused of spying for the US.
The newspaper Jomhuri Eslami said the Supreme Court had ratified the death sentence and handed it down to relevant authorities.
Firoozi helped set up the Iran News in 1994. Since then, the daily has been attacked by hardline newspapers for being too soft on the US, although it was believed to often reflect the views of Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Firoozi had earlier served as editor-in-chief of Tehran Times, a major English-language newspaper set up after the 1979 Islamic revolution.