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SWEDEN AND IRAN

Iran says Swede arrested for alleged espionage

Iran said on Saturday it had arrested a Swedish national on allegations of espionage, without providing details on the suspect's identity nor the date of their detention.

Iran says Swede arrested for alleged espionage
The flag of Iran waves in front of the the International Center building in Vienna, Austria. File photo: AP Photo/Michael Gruber/TT

The announcement comes amid diplomatic tensions between Tehran and Stockholm, after a Swedish court sentenced a former Iranian prison official to life for war crimes during mass executions in the Islamic republic in 1988.

Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had “identified and arrested a national of the Kingdom of Sweden suspected of espionage”.

In early May, the Swedish foreign ministry said a Swede in his thirties had been arrested in Iran.

It was not immediately clear if the announcement on Saturday refers to that man or another Swede.

“In all the previous trips, the suspect… communicated with a number of European and non-European suspects who were under surveillance in Iran,” the statement read.

“The suspect in question re-entered the country a few months ago after the arrest of another European spy” to collect information, it alleged, adding the suspect had been taken into custody while leaving Iran.

The intelligence ministry said the suspect had visited Israel, the Islamic republic’s arch-enemy, before going to Iran.

It also alleged Sweden had “supported several proxy spies” for Israel, including Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian academic who has been sentenced to death in the Islamic republic.

Djalali’s sentence was issued in 2017 after he was convicted of passing information about two Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel’s Mossad spy agency that led to their assassinations.

He was granted Swedish citizenship the following year.

His case was followed by the trial in Stockholm of Hamid Noury, a former official in Iran’s judiciary accused of war crimes over the killing of prisoners in Iran during the 1980s.

Noury received a life sentence from a Swedish court on July 14th. Iran dismissed the verdict as “political” and has called for his release.

Relations between to the two countries have been strained over the case, with Tehran recalling its ambassador to Sweden for consultations a week later.

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SWEDEN AND IRAN

Imprisoned Swedish-Iranian academic Djalali set to go on hunger strike

Swedish-Iranian researcher Ahmadreza Djalali, who is on death row in Iran over what human rights groups consider to be fabricated charges of espionage, will begin a hunger strike on Wednesday, his wife, Vida Mehrannia, told The Local. 

Imprisoned Swedish-Iranian academic Djalali set to go on hunger strike

The hunger strike is in protest of being left out of a controversial prisoner exchange with Iran, which saw two other Swedish citizens return home this month. The Swedish government has argued it tried to get Djalali out too, but Iran refused to discuss his case.

“Ahmadreza now feels he had no option but to go on hunger strike. He has already suffered nearly 3,000 days of unimaginable torment in Iran’s dungeons and is in extremely poor health. He suffers from several medical conditions including heart arrhythmias, bracycardia, hypotension, chronic gastritis, anemia, and extreme weight loss following his previous two hunger strikes,” said Mehrannia in a statement sent to The Local and other Swedish media.

“This hunger strike is highly life threatening, Ahmadreza knows this better than anyone else – but he sees no other option. This physician, loving husband, and father of two, wants to be reunited with his family. He wants to serve society once more as a dedicated doctor. He wants to be recognised and treated as a human being again. Ahmadreza is now pleading to the world for help. He needs this endless brutality to end. Please hear his anguished plea and amplify his voice with yours,” she added.

Amnesty International has called on Sweden’s government to “do everything” to ensure Djalali can return.

“Mr Prime Minister, you decided to leave me behind under huge risk of being executed,” Djalali said in a recent audio recording shared with Swedish media, in which he dared Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson to meet his son in front of TV cameras and tell him “why you left his father behind”.

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