Sweden calls for halt to execution of Ahmad Reza Jalali
The Swedish Foreign Minister says he has expressed concern in a call with his Iranian counterpart about news of the execution of Ahmad Reza Jalali. Jalali has informed his family in a phone call that he will be transferred to solitary confinement to carry out the sentence.
Ahmad Reza Jalali, a dual-citizen prisoner sentenced to death in Evin Prison, said in a phone call to his family that he will be transferred to solitary confinement to carry out his death sentence.
Following the news, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde announced that she had raised her concerns with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. She tweeted that she condemned Jalali's death sentence and that Sweden was trying to prevent it from being carried out.
Ahmadreza Jalali is currently being held in one of the solitary confinement cells in Ward 209 of Evin Prison.
In an interview with HRANA, the news agency of the Human Rights Activists' Association in Iran, Ms. Hilaleh Mousavian, Jalali's defense lawyer, expressed concern about the possibility of her client's death sentence being carried out and expressed hope that the efforts of human rights organizations and the Swedish government to prevent the execution of this sentence will not be in vain.
Vida Mehrannia, Mr. Jalali's wife, shared the content of the aforementioned phone call with the media, citing her husband as saying that this call "may be our last conversation."
News reports indicate that Mr. Jalali was transferred to the Evin Courthouse's Sentence Execution Unit on Tuesday and eventually transferred to the quarantine facility of Evin Prison. Mr. Jalali's transfer form states that he will be kept in quarantine for a week to complete the formalities of executing the death sentence.
Ahmadreza Jalali studied medicine in Iran and worked at the Natural Disasters Center. He immigrated to Sweden in 2009 to continue his studies. He later completed his postdoctoral studies in crisis medicine at the University of Piedmont in Italy and eventually settled in Sweden with his wife and two children.
He went to Iran in May 2016 at the invitation of the University of Tehran, but was arrested and taken to prison. Following the announcement of charges of “engaging in war through espionage by Israel,” the researcher was sentenced to death.
The Tehran prosecutor accused Ahmadreza Jalali of “transferring information related to the regime’s top-secret projects in the fields of research, military, defense, and nuclear energy in exchange for receiving payments along with Swedish citizenship for himself and his family.”
The death sentence of this dual-national prisoner was confirmed by the Supreme Court in December 2017.
Ahmadreza Jalali has always denied this accusation and said that the confessions taken from him in this regard were made under severe pressure and cannot be relied upon legally.
Source: DW
