A man accused by Iran of carrying out an assassination "sponsored and designed by Israel" has pleaded guilty to the murder of an Iranian "nuclear scientist".
According to Iranian media, Majid Jamali-Fashi, 26, admitted killing Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physicist who Iran says was involved in the country's nuclear programme,
Jamali-Fashi confessed to having attached a remote-control bomb to a motorcycle parked on the street, which detonated and killed Ali-Mohammadi while he was leaving home for work in January 2010.
But seasoned observers questioned whether it was a show trial intended to cover-up Iran's embarrassment over its failure to protect its nuclear scientists.
The extent of Ali-Mohammadi's involvement in Iran's nuclear programme is still not clear. At the time of the assassination, some expressed skepticism over claims that he was a nuclear scientist, saying that he had voiced strong support for the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the past.
But it emerged later that Ali-Mohammadi could have been associated with Tehran's nuclear ambitions after his name was seen on a list of an Iranian team at the Sesame Council, a joint-project involving different countries including Israel which runs a particle accelerator in Jordan.
Prosecutors in the case accused Israel and its intelligence agency, Mossad, of being behind "terrorist groups" trained to kill Iranian scientists in order to halt the country'sIran's nuclear programme.
"The defendant had travelled to Israel to receive training from Mossad and had agreed to assassinate Dr Ali-Mohammadi in return for $120,000," the English-language newspaper Tehran Times quoted the city's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, as saying.
According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Jamali-Fashi said he was also assigned to carry out five other "terrorist operations" after the assassination.
Ali-Mohammadi's family asked for death penalty for the accused, according to Fars, but Judge Abol-Ghassem Salavati said sentencing would be issued in due course.
Jamali-Fashi had previously appeared in a TV programme in January in which he confessed to having been hired by Israel and trained at a military base outside Tel Aviv before being dispatched to Iran to kill Ali-Mohammadi.
The programme described him as "the main element" of any Israeli-trained network involved in the assassination. At the time of the broadcast, Iran's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, said Iran had uncovered "a US-backed Israeli operation" and arrested more than 10 people with links to Mossad.
In response to Jamali-Fashi's TV confessions, Israel denied any connection with him.
In recent years, Iran's nuclear programme has experienced a series of setback after the assassinations of its scientists and the Stuxnet computer worm, which was designed to sabotage its atomic facilities and halt its uranium-enrichment programme. The malware is believed to have targeted a control system used in Iran's nuclear sites in July last year.
In November, Majid Shahriari, a nuclear scientist, was killed and Fereidoon Abbasi Davani, Iran's current atomic chief, survived assassination in two similar attacks to the one which Ali-Mohammadi died.
In July, an Iranian academic, Darioush Rezaeinejad was shot dead by gunmen riding on motorcycles. He was initially described by state media as a nuclear scientist but officials later denied he was involved in Iran's atomic programme. Rumours spread that at the time that the 35-year-old masters student might have been mistakenly killed instead of a nuclear scientist with a similar name, Darioush Rezaei.
