David Miliband has condemned the jail sentence handed down to a British embassy staff member in Tehran as "wholly unjustified" and urged Iran to repeal it.

The UK foreign Secretary was speaking after Hossein Rassam, an Iranian national working as the chief political analyst at the embassy, was sentenced to four years in jail and banned from working for any foreign embassies for at least five years after being found guilty of espionage. He was charged following the unprecedented post-election unrest that followed the disputed re-election of president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad in June.