Wife of Ahmadrieza Jalali: He is merely a victim
Vida Mehrannia, wife of Ahmadrieza Jalali, tells Deutsche Welle that there is no legally valid evidence against her husband. Cambiz Ghafouri, a freelance journalist, also says that the Islamic Republic proposed a prisoner exchange involving Jalali for Assadollah Assadi approximately two years ago.
Ahmadrieza Jalali, a physician and specialist in emergency medicine who has been imprisoned since 2016, was transferred to solitary confinement on Tuesday, December 25, to carry out his death sentence.
In a phone call with his family, he announced this news and stated that this call might be his last.
Vida Mehrannia, Mr. Jalali’s wife, told Deutsche Welle: “Yesterday Ahmadrieza called and said they are taking him to Evin quarantine and from there they will take him to Rajaishahr in Karaj to carry out the sentence, and he said maybe he won’t be able to call again and asked me to follow up on his situation.”
Some reports indicate that the Islamic Republic has proposed exchanging this researcher for Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat imprisoned in Belgium. Assadi is currently on trial for allegedly participating in a bombing plot against a Mujahedin-e Khalq gathering in Paris.
Cambiz Ghafouri, a freelance journalist, wrote on Twitter about ten days ago that he had heard this news from two sources.
He told Deutsche Welle that in early 2019, on the sidelines of one of the European Union meetings, he heard from two diplomats that the Islamic Republic proposed exchanging Assadi for Jalali, but neither Sweden nor Belgium accepted this proposal.
Ahmadrieza Jalali went to Iran in May 2016 at the invitation of Tehran University, but was arrested there and transferred to prison. Following charges of “waging war through espionage for Israel,” this researcher was sentenced to death.
The Tehran prosecutor charged Ahmadrieza Jalali with “transferring information related to the regime’s completely secret projects in research, military, defense and nuclear fields in exchange for receiving financial sums along with Swedish citizenship for himself and his family.”
The death sentence for this dual national prisoner was upheld by the Supreme Court in December 2017.
Ahmadrieza Jalali has always rejected these charges, stating that confessions extracted from him were obtained under severe pressure and are not legally valid.
Mr. Jalali wrote several months after his arrest in a letter from prison that the charges “were never announced to me, neither in writing nor even verbally, but rather the interrogators would say ‘you are a traitor and have no rights! Anything done for you is only favor and mercy from us!'”
In Ahmadrieza Jalali’s letter, it was also stated that his young children “were threatened with arrest and harassment” and he was not allowed contact with his children “for up to 21 days” to “convince” him that they had been arrested.
Ahmadrieza Jalali and Vida Mehrannia have an 18-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son who live with their mother in Sweden.
Demands and expectations from the Swedish government
A group of Iranians living in Sweden and Iranian opposition groups have asked the Swedish government to make efforts to stop the execution of Mr. Jalali. Three organizations—the Left Party of Iran (Fadaian-e Khalq), the Organization of Fadaian-e Khalq of Iran (Majority), and the Union of Iranian Republicans in Sweden—sent a letter to the country’s foreign minister requesting that the ministry “take necessary and essential steps to prevent this inhumane act by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Ann Linde, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday following the announcement of Mr. Jalali’s imminent execution that she had expressed the Swedish government’s concerns about this issue in contact with Mohammad Javad Zarif, her Iranian counterpart.
Source: DW
