Detailed Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Problem:Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| Iran ’s judiciary on Monday sentenced to death an imprisoned American convicted of espionage for the Central Intelligence Agency . The punishment shocked his family and was imposed against a backdrop of increasingly bellicose relations with the United States over the disputed Iranian nuclear program . 
  
 The sentence against the American, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, 28, a former Marine, was likely to become a new point of contention, and possible bargaining leverage, in Iran’s struggle against the West over its nuclear program. A tightening vise of sanctions, which threaten vital oil sales and with them the nation’s economy, has left Tehran feeling besieged and pushed relations with the United States and its allies to the lowest ebb since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 
  
 In retaliation, Tehran announced on Sunday that it had begun to enrich uranium at a second site, after having threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, a measure that would severely curtail oil shipments. 
  
 The details of the case against Mr. Hekmati have been cloaked in secrecy since he was detained in August in Iran, to which his family said he had traveled to visit his grandparents. Official confirmation that he was even in Iranian custody was not provided until last month. The White House and the State Department, noting that Iranian prosecutors have a history of coercing confessions, denied that Mr. Hekmati was a spy and called for his immediate release. The C.I.A. declined to comment. 
  
 Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said, “We strongly condemn such a verdict and will work with our partners to convey our condemnation to the Iranian government.” 
  
 Iran has a record of arresting and convicting Americans suspected of spying, then freeing them later after bail money has been paid. But rights activists said Mr. Hekmati’s case was the first in the nearly 33-year history of estranged relations with the United States in which Iran’s Islamic authorities had ordered the execution of an American citizen. 
  
 “This whole case is very politically motivated,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an advocacy group based in New York that has been monitoring Mr. Hekmati’s case. “There’s absolutely no evidence against him.” 
  
 In a statement released by Mr. Hekmati’s parents and posted on www.FreeAmir.org, a new Web site, his mother, Behnaz, and father, Ali, said they were “shocked and terrified by the news that our son, Amir, has been sentenced to death.” 
  
 Denying that he was a spy, the parents said, “We believe that this verdict is the result of a process that was neither transparent nor fair.” They added, “His very life is being exploited for political gain.” 
  
 Iran’s official news media portrayed Mr. Hekmati’s prosecution and punishment in totally different terms, saying he had admitted to investigators that he had been sent to Iran by the C.I.A. after a decade of training and that he had been assigned to infiltrate the Intelligence Ministry. Accounts in the state-run media called his presence in Iran part of an “intricate American plot to carry out espionage activities in the Islamic republic.” 
  
 Mr. Hekmati, who was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., and spent part of his youth in Flint, Mich., where some members of his family still live, has not been allowed to communicate with relatives or legal counsel either in Iran or the United States. He is part of a population of an estimated one million Iranian-Americans who have extensive family ties in Iran. 
  
 The death sentence, ordered by the Islamic Revolution Court Branch 15 in Tehran, can be appealed within 20 days. But Iranian experts in the United States said the sentence might never be carried out. 
  
 The court’s order suggested that Iran was willing to go to new lengths to increase its leverage in dealing with what it views as American-led hostility over the nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes but the United States, the European Union and Israel regard as a cloak to attain a nuclear weapon. 
  
 Over the past few years, Iran has endured four rounds of Security Council economic sanctions, the mysterious assassinations of its nuclear scientists, computerized sabotage of its uranium enrichment centrifuges and the death of its top missile expert in an unexplained explosion after having ignored repeated demands by the United Nations to stop enriching uranium. |||||
Solution:
An American has been sentenced to death in Iran for spying for the CIA. Former US Marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati, 28, was convicted of "cooperating with a hostile nation." Hekmati, who also has Iranian citizenship, was shown on state TV last month confessing that he spied for the CIA. His confession was the key evidence against him, reports the Telegraph. His family in the US said he's no spy, and that he was in Iran visiting grandparents. The US State Department is demanding his release.