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Shahram Amiri, who has flown from the US to Tehran, also denied being heavily involved in Iran’s nuclear programme.

Mr Amiri disappeared a year ago and resurfaced this week in the Pakistani embassy in Washington asking to be repatriated.

The US said he had been in the country “of his own free will”.

Wearing a beige suit, a smiling Mr Amiri was greeted at Tehran’s international airport early on Thursday by his tearful son and wife, along with other family members and Deputy Foreign Minister, Hassan Qashqavi.

Speaking at a news conference afterwards, he repeated his earlier claims that he had been abducted by US agents while undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi Arabian city of Medina.

Mr Amiri said he was placed under intense pressure by his interrogators to co-operate in the first months following his alleged kidnapping.

“I was under the harshest mental and physical torture,” he said, adding that Israeli agents had been present during the interrogations and that the CIA had offered him $50m to remain in the US.

“The Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will to use me for revealing some false information about Iran’s nuclear work. But with God’s will, I resisted.”

Mr Amiri offered no evidence, but said he would eventually.

“I have some documents proving that I’ve not been free in the United States and have always been under the control of armed agents of US intelligence services.”

He also denied he had been heavily involved in Iran’s nuclear programme, saying he was a “simple researcher who was working at a university”.

“I’m not involved in any confidential jobs. I had no classified information.”

“I had nothing to do with the Natanz and Fordo sites,” he said, referring to Iran’s two uranium enrichment plants.

Unconfirmed reports that he worked for Iran’s atomic energy organisation were “a tool the US government brought up for political pressure”.

Mr Qashqavi thanked the scientist for his “resistance to pressure”.

He rejected suggestions that Mr Amiri’s return was linked to a possible deal to release three US hikers who have been detained in Iran since 2009.
‘Breakdown’

In the US, unnamed officials and security sources said that Mr Amiri defected and was put into a programme similar to a witness-protection scheme.

Later, he apparently became concerned for family members he had left behind, had a breakdown and decided to return to Iran, US reports claim.

A US official told the BBC: “He provided useful information to the United States. The Iranians now have him. In terms of win-loss, it’s not even a close call.”

In its online edition, The Washington Post newspaper quoted unnamed officials saying Mr Amiri had been working for the CIA for more than a year and was paid $5m.

In June, the Iranian government announced that it had handed evidence to the US that the scientist had been abducted.

It came shortly after Mr Amiri appeared in two videos posted on the internet giving conflicting stories about how he had arrived in the US.

He said in the first that he had been kidnapped by CIA and Saudi agents while on a pilgrimage. In the second message, he said he had gone to the US to improve his education and was living freely in Arizona.

In a third message posted on the internet later that month, Mr Amiri said he had escaped from US custody and was on the run in Virginia.

In an interview with Iranian state Press TV before he left the US, Mr Amiri said he was in Medina when three men in a van posing as fellow pilgrims offered him a ride.

“As I sat down, the man in back held a gun toward me and told me to keep quiet,” he said.

“They took me to a secret place and injected me, and when I woke up I saw myself in a huge airplane” and was taken to the US.

The US state department repeatedly denied it had kidnapped him, but never said that he was not in the country.

Iran accused Saudi Arabia of handing over Shahram Amiri to the US after he went missing during a pilgrimage to Mecca a year ago. A man purporting to be Amiri subsequently appeared in a series of internet videos. In one, the man said he was studying in the US, while in another a man calling himself Amiri said he was hiding from US agents.

This morning, a spokesman for Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs in Islamabad said Amiri had been “dropped off” at the Iranian interests section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington at 6.30pm (11.30pm BST) last night.

“He was dropped there by someone,” said Abdul Basit. “He’s in the Iranian interests section, not in the Pakistan embassy per se. They are making arrangements to repatriate him.”

Because Iran and the US do not have diplomatic relations, Pakistan handles Iranian interests in the US.

The Iranian interests section is in a separate building, about two miles from the Pakistani embassy and is staffed by around eight Iranians. Basit said he did not know how Amiri had got there or how he would be sent back to Iran.

Separately, Iran’s state radio reported today that Amiri was taking refuge and wanted to return to Iran immediately.

Amiri, who works for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, could have valuable information on the progress of Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to some reports, he had defected to the US and was helping the CIA. The US, Britain and other western powers allege that Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons, while Iran insists its nuclear development is for peaceful purposes.