An American-Iranian citizen who secretly passed sensitive information to Iran has received what many call a shockingly light sentence.
Abuzar Rahmati, born in Iran, 43, actively reached out to Iranian officials in 2017 and later traveled to Tehran, where he met intelligence officers and government officials. He agreed to supply them with information, initially about the U.S. solar energy sector, but soon expanded to aviation data, including airports and control towers.
Using his federal position, Rahmati illegally downloaded large amounts of material from the Federal Aviation Administration’s database. In one case, he smuggled about 172 gigabytes of classified data into Iran. At other times, he sent information to his brother abroad, who then passed it on to Iranian officials.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced his punishment: just one year in a federal prison and three years of supervised release.