The Swedish-Iranian doctor Ahmadreza Djalali, who is imprisoned in Iran, may soon be executed. This is stated by his wife, Vida Mehrannia, who received a call from her husband during the morning. He was arrested during a conference trip to Iran in 2016.
Vida Mehrannia says that she is outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get in touch with someone. She has called there many times without being able to talk to anyone. It was this morning that she received a call from her husband Ahmadreza Djalali when he told him that he was to be transferred to Karaj Prison outside Tehran. There he will sit in an isolation cell and then the death penalty will be executed shortly, she says.
Ahmadreza Djalali has now been imprisoned for over four years. He was arrested in April 2016 by the Iranian intelligence service during a conference trip to the country. A year later, he was accused of espionage and sentenced to death.
The case has aroused great interest among human rights organizations and both the UN and the EU have demanded his release. Julia Eriksson Pogorzelska at the Foreign Ministry’s press service tells Ekot that the government is aware of the information and is acting urgently. The government is in contact with representatives of Iran, she says.
The Christian Democrat member of parliament Lars Adaktusson has been involved in the case for several years and he is very critical of Sweden’s handling of Ahmadreza Djalali.
– What they have not done is, for example, to have taken help from the countries that have offered to help, such as Switzerland and the United States. I have raised this with the Minister for Foreign Affairs without receiving a reply. I believe that Sweden must act on its own, but also take help from other countries, says Lars Adaktusson.