TEHRAN (FNA)- Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scholar who returned home after being kidnapped by CIA in Saudi Arabia last year, said that Israeli agents interrogated him while he was in the US.

Amiri made the announcement while talking to reporters upon arrival at the International Imam Khomeini Airport in southern Tehran this morning.

Amiri, a university lecturer, was kidnapped in the holy Saudi city of Medina on June 3, 2009 during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. He was abducted by US agents with the help of the Saudi intelligence service.

The Iranian scientist, who took refuge in Iran’s interest section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington on Tuesday, left the United States for Tehran Wednesday.

Amiri said he was under the harshest mental and physical tortures during the initial two months of his captivity in the US, adding that the US agents had threatened to transfer him to the Zionist regime’s prisons if he refused to cooperate with them.

“I was kidnapped during a joint operation by the US and Saudi intelligence agents when I was in front of my hotel in the holy city of Medina. I was made unconscious and was transferred to unknown places first in Saudi Arabia and then in the US,” he said.

He reiterated that by his abduction, Washington wanted to exert pressure on the Iranian government. “Washington, through a political play, was trying to announce to the world that I had applied for asylum,” Amiri added.

The released Iranian researcher dismissed remarks made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying he had freely come to the US and was free to go whenever he wanted.

He said US officials had even offered him $50 million if he changed his mind and decided to stay in the US. “They also assured to take my family out of Iran,” he added.

Amiri reiterated that he was a simple researcher and that he had nothing to do with the Natanz and Fordo sites. “I am a simple researcher who works in a university which is open to all and there is no secret work happening there,” he noted.

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