Sweden recently granted citizenship to Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian academic currently on death row in Iran, with the hopes that it will allow the Swedish Foreign Ministry to intervene in the case and get the doctor released.
Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian academic with Swedish residency, was arrested in Tehran in April 2016 and later convicted of espionage, accused of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.
The prosecutor said Djalali had confessed to meeting agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency to supply information on Iran’s nuclear and defense plans and personnel. Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in December.
Djalali’s wife Vida Mehrannia explained that decision to grant him Swedish citizenship gives her hope that he will be released.
She said: “I was so happy, because I got some hope that the Swedish government can [do] more to help my husband and he will get more support from Sweden.”
Ami Hedenborg of Amnesty International’s Sweden branch also noted that this should make a difference in the case, because the Swedish Foreign Affairs ministry now has a formal right to met with Djalali, something his right of residence in Sweden, did not permit.
Iranian officials reacted with summoning the Swedish ambassador to protest over Sweden’s granting of citizenship.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA that the Swedish envoy in Tehran had been summoned in protest on Monday.
