Report: Iran tortures nuke scientist after US return.

Report: Iran tortures nuke scientist after US return.Nuclear scientist said to have been kidnapped by CIA hasn't been seen in public since return.An Iranian nuclear scientist who claimed he slipped away from his CIA captors has not been seen publicly since his heroic return to Tehran last year and could be facing an investigation as a possible turncoat, according to an opposition website. The report on the website Iranbriefing.net says that Shahram Amiri is now being held in a Tehran prison, where he allegedly has faced beatings so severe that he had to be hospitalized for a week. The website's account could not be verified, but it purports to offer the first details on Amiri's fate since he surfaced in the United States six months ago amid an array of contradictory stories between Tehran and Washington.The Farsi-language account posted on the Iranbriefing.net website claims to pick up Amiri's trail after his highly publicized return. It cited anonymous family members as saying Amiri was first held in a safe house in Tehran and allowed weekend visits with relatives at the Talaiie cultural center, which is operated by Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.The website quoted family members as being told that Amiri's movements were restricted for "his own safety." The report says - without citing any source - that Amiri was later moved to a former military lockup, the Heshmatieh Prison, in Tehran, where he allegedly faced harsh interrogations and beatings that left him in a military-run hospital afterward for a week.In October, one of Iran's vice presidents, Ali Akbar Salehi - who is now acting foreign minister - acknowledged that some personnel at nuclear facilities had passed secrets to the West in exchange for payment. Salehi claimed that it "awakened" security forces to impose tighter controls.The website is operated by the IranBriefing Foundation, which describes itself as a "non-profit human rights organization" based in the United States that focuses on the role of the Revolutionary Guard and other Iranian security agencies. Officials at the group could not be reached immediately for comment.Read the full story here.