Swedish-Iranian prisoner starts hunger strike

Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmad Reza Jalali, who has been on death row in Iran for eight years, will begin a hunger strike this week, his wife told AFP on Tuesday.

Vida Mehrannia said her husband “thought the only way anyone can hear his voice in the world is to just start a hunger strike” on Wednesday.

Two Swedes were released by Tehran on June 15 in exchange for Hamid Noury, a 63-year-old former Iranian prisons official who was handed a life sentence in Sweden in 2022 for his role in mass killings in Iranian jails in 1988.

The two Swedes were EU diplomat Johan Floderus, held in Iran since April 2022 on espionage charges, and Iranian-Swede Saeed Azizi, arrested in November.

But Jalali, on death row in Iran since 2017 after an espionage conviction, missed out on the swap.

In an audio message sent to AFP on June 19, Jalali criticized Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for his decision “to leave me behind under huge risk of being executed.”

The Swedish government has insisted that it tried to secure Jalali’s release but that Tehran refused to recognize him as a Swedish citizen as he was only an Iranian national when he was arrested and received his Swedish citizenship later.