Iran has asked UN chief Ban Ki-moon for help on the fate of a former deputy defence minister who disappeared in Turkey in 2007, media said Friday after reports that he may have died in an Israeli jail.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi wrote to Ban urging him "to strive to clarify the fate" of Ali Reza Asghari who went missing in February 2007 after checking into a hotel in Istanbul during a private visit.

At the time Iran accused Israel of snatching Asghari, and media in Israel reported that the Jewish state's intelligence agency, Mossad, had abducted him.

Salehi's appeal came after Iranian officials and media cited reports posted on Israeli news websites which alleged that Asghari had committed suicide in an Israeli prison.

Iranian officials and media said the website reports were later removed.

A prison official in Israel told AFP in Jerusalem he was totally unaware of such reports.

"Without a doubt the release of these reports further strengthens suspicions that Asghari was abducted by the Zionist regime," Salehi said in his letter to Ban.

Israel, he said, is "directly responsible for his life."

Salehi also called for an "opportune response from the international community, especially the organisations responsible for international peace and security."

The spokesman of parliament's foreign affairs commission, Kazem Jalali, said on Wednesday: "The information which was posted on Internet sites of the Zionist regime before being removed clarified the situation.

"It is perfectly clear that the Zionists have assassinated" Asghari, Jalali added, dismissing as "totally illogical" any notion that he could have taken his own life.

The media in Israel were rife with speculation about Asghari's fate, including that he had been snatched by the Mossad -- a theory rejected by then defence minister Amir Peretz.

The Washington Post reported three years ago that Asghari had defected and was cooperating with US intelligence services.

Asghari served under Iran's reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

His family has said he disappeared in December 2006, not in February the next year as reported by Western media.

earlier related report
Iran hangs 'Mossad spy': state media
Tehran (AFP) Dec 28, 2010 - Iran on Tuesday hanged a man found guilty of feeding Israeli spy agency Mossad with Iranian military secrets and information on its missile programme over a period of six years, news agency IRNA reported.

Ali Akbar Siadat was hanged in Tehran's Evin prison after being condemned to death for "working for Mossad," IRNA quoted the Tehran prosecutor's office as saying.

Siadat was found guilty of having had links with Mossad for six years. "He had received 60,000 dollars to give classified information to the Zionist regime," the state news agency said.

IRNA said Siadat had been sentenced to death on charges of "strengthening the Zionist regime, opposing the Islamic republic and (spreading) corruption on earth."

Siadat had acknowledged having established contacts with one Israeli embassy overseas and that he had been giving information "about missiles belonging to the Revolutionary Guards."

He was also transferring information "to the enemy of military bases, fighter jets, the number of training flights, airplane accidents and air systems of the Revolutionary Guards," the report said.

Israeli government officials declined to comment on the allegations.

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran's powerful ideological army, controls the country's sensitive missile programme, including the Shahab-3 missile which Tehran says can reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf.

Three years ago Siadat had received a computer and other equipment for his work. He used to meet his contacts from the Israeli intelligence service in hotels in Turkey, Thailand and the Netherlands, IRNA said.

It added that he was found with 29 pages of classified information when arrested two years ago with his wife while trying to leave Iran.

Iranian media on Sunday announced that another Iranian had also been sentenced to death for working as a spy for Israel.

His identity will be revealed after confirmation of the sentence, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said, according to Mehr news agency.

Media reports late October quoted Dolatabadi as saying that two Iranians had been charged with spying for Israel, which accuses Tehran of seeking to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme.

In November 2008, Iran executed an Iranian telecom salesman convicted of spying for the Jewish state. In the same month Iran said it had busted a ring of Iranians who spied for Israel after being trained in Tel Aviv.

It was unclear whether Siadat was among those arrested in November 2008.

Iran routinely accuses arch-foe Israel of carrying out hostile activities against the Islamic republic, including espionage against its armed forces and its nuclear programmes.

Iranian officials have accused the Israeli intelligence services, as well as the United States and Britain, of attacking two of its top nuclear scientists on November 26.

Majid Shahriari, a senior scientist involved in Iran's nuclear activities, was killed by a bomb placed against his car. Fereydoun Abbassi Davani, another top nuclear expert, was wounded in a similar attack.

Israel and its ally the United States have not ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its nuclear programme.

Iran denies that its programme of uranium enrichment is aimed at making nuclear weapons.

IRNA reported that another man, Ali Saremi, was also hanged on Tuesday in Evin prison after he was found guilty of anti-revolution activities.

Saremi, a member of the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), the main armed opposition group, was charged with participating in activities of counter-revolution groups and providing them with information.

The latest two hangings bring to 171 the total number of people executed in Iran so far this year, according to an AFP count based on media reports. At least 270 people were executed in 2009.

Along with China, Saudi Arabia and the United States, Iran has one of the highest numbers of executions each year.

The Islamic republic says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order and is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings.

Murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery are other crimes punishable by death in Iran.