It is still unclear whether the death sentence against the Swedish-Iranian researcher Ahmadreza Djalali has really been carried out, which Iran has previously threatened to happen on Saturday.
His wife tells Dagens Nyheter.
– We were told earlier today that he is still in the same ward at the prison. Now we have not received any new information, says Vida Mehrannia to the newspaper on Saturday night.
A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said earlier this week that the country was considering postponing the planned execution.
– Iranian authorities have once again broadcast Ahmadreza’s forced “confession” on national television. It is very tough right now, the risk of execution is great, says Vida Mehrannia to DN.
The human rights group Amnesty stated on Friday that Iran, through threats of execution, is trying to get Belgium and Sweden to make concessions in two cases involving former Iranian officials.
49-year-old Ahmadreza Djalali, who defended his dissertation in emergency medicine at Karolinska Institutet in 2012, was arrested by the Iranian intelligence service in April 2016, when he was in the country at the invitation of an Iranian university.
He was sentenced to death in 2017, accused of spying for Israel. The accusations have been dismissed by Sweden.
Facts
Accused of involvement with Mossad
Ahmadreza Djalali is a physician and researcher in disaster medicine. He is an Iranian and Swedish citizen. He has lived in Sweden with his wife and two children since 2009, with the exception of a couple of years in Italy, and had a permanent residence permit in Sweden before citizenship. Djalali defended his dissertation in disaster medicine at Karolinska Institutet in 2012.
Djalali was arrested by the Iranian intelligence service on April 25, 2016, while in the country to attend seminars on emergency medicine at the invitation of a university in Iran. He had traveled to Iran on several previous occasions without any problems.
In October 2017, the Public Prosecutor in Tehran, without explicitly mentioning Ahmadreza Djalali, said that the “respondent” had had several meetings with Mossad (Israel’s intelligence service) and provided them with sensitive information about Iran’s military and nuclear facilities in exchange for money and residence permits in Sweden. Djalali was sentenced to death.
On December 26, 2017, Djalali went on a hunger strike after authorities tried to force him to sign an acknowledgment that he was a spy.
The evidence adduced against him is an admission that is alleged to have been forced under threat.
Source: Amnesty Sweden
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