The Iranian scholar who went missing last year while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia has confirmed his abduction by the US in a video message.
Shahram Amiri, a researcher at Iran's University of Malek Ashtar, insisted in the message, released on Monday, that he was kidnapped by US agents in route to Mecca in June 2009.

"I was kidnapped from Medina in a joint operation by the American intelligence service ... and Saudi Arabia," Amiri said, speaking in Farsi, in the footage.

"I was given an anesthetic injection. When I regained consciousness, I was being taken to America. During the eight months that I have been kept here in America, I was subject to severe torture and psychological pressure by the American intelligence ... groups," Amiri says in the video.

He said he had been forced to take part in an interview "with an American media source to claim that I was an important figure in Iran's nuclear programme and that I had sought asylum in America at my own will."

Amiri said in the video he was in Tucson, Arizona in the United States and that the footage was taken on April 5 this year. He urged human rights groups to help him go back to Iran.

Amiri stated that his abduction was intended to mount political pressure on the Iranian government.

The ABC News as well as many other members of corporated media started a propaganda against Iranian peacful nuclear energy program & described the defection as “an intelligence coup,” and claimed that information gleaned from debriefing Dr Amiri had added detail and confirmation to existing CIA intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear programme. It also increased the growing international pressure on Tehran.