Iran has executed a nuclear scientist who allegedly accepted millions in bribes spying for the U.S., the country’s state-controlled media announced Sunday.

The strange saga of Shahram Amiri began in 2009, during Democratic presidential nominee Hillary’s Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Amiri was making a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia when he abruptly vanished without a trace. A few months later, Iran accused the U.S. of kidnapping Amiri with Saudi cooperation, but the U.S steadfastly denied this.

In early 2010, though, news reports started coming out claiming Amiri was a long-time U.S. spy inside Iran, and that his disappearance was a carefully planned CIA operation to allow him to defect to the U.S.

But things only got weirder from there. In June, 2010, Amiri resurfaced in two homemade videos where he claimed he had been kidnapped by the U.S. He said U.S. officials had tortured him and offered mammoth bribes to get nuclear secrets from him, but he claimed to have resisted all these efforts. Amiri also expressed a wish to return to Iran, which he did one month’s later to a hero’s welcome.

At the time of his return, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amiri had returned home after Iranian officials threatened to kill his son. Meanwhile, Iran’s official Fars news service claimed Amiri was actually a double agent, who had obtained secret information from U.S. intelligence during his stay in the U.S.

Whatever the full truth was, less than a year after his return, Amiri was arrested and charged with treason. His claim he was a victim of U.S. torture was not helped by leaks from U.S. officials who said Amiri had been paid millions of dollars for the information he disclosed, and labeled his claims of torture a “fairy tale.”

Amiri was found guilty and given what was thought to be a 10-year sentence, but it turns out Iran actually had sentenced him to death.

“Amiri had access to confidential military secrets and was connected to our No. 1 enemy, the Great Satan,” Iranian deputy chief justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei said in a statement to the Iranian Student News Agency. “He was sentenced to death in primary court, and the sentence was confirmed by Supreme Court.

The execution comes as a surprise, apparently even to Amiri’s family. The family told the BBC his body had rope marks around the neck, indicating he had been hanged.