Academic blasts Swedish PM after missing out on prisoner swap

Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmad Reza Jalali, who has been on death row in Iran for eight years, criticised Sweden's prime minister after being excluded from a prisoner swap, in an audio recording obtained by AFP on Wednesday.

Two Swedes were released by Tehran on Saturday 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.

"Mr Prime Minister, you decided to leave me behind under huge risk of being executed," Jalali said, addressing Ulf Kristersson, in an audio recording shared with AFP by his wife, Vida Mehrannia.

"I talk to you from Evin prison, inside a horrible cave where I have spent eight years, two months, almost 3,000 days of my life," Jalali said, adding: "Why not me?"

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said Stockholm tried to secure his release.

"Unfortunately, Iran did not want to discuss him at all, they do not recognise him as a Swedish citizen because he was only an Iranian citizen when he was arrested," Billstrom said in a statement to AFP.

Jalali was granted Swedish citizenship while in jail in Iran.

"He was also arrested long before Hamid Noury was arrested in Sweden, and thus for reasons other than being a pawn in Iran's cynical game to get Noury released from Sweden," Billstrom said, adding that efforts to secure Jalali's release continued.

"It's just excuses," Mehrannia told AFP, saying she believed that her husband's release "wasn't important to them, they didn't want to challenge Iran".

"I'm so angry, I'm at a loss for words."

- 'Worth it' -

In his message, Jalali called on Kristersson to meet with his son and family in front of television cameras and explain to him "why you left his father behind".

"My son was four when I was detained and he is now 12 and a half years old. He spent two-thirds of his life without a father," Jalali said, noting that his son had been born in Sweden and raised in Sweden.

Mehrannia said that Jalali was now being denied any calls to Sweden as a result of publishing the recording.

"But I think it was worth it," she said. "It was important."

Amnesty International has called on Sweden's government to "do everything" to ensure Jalali can return.

Maja Aberg, who has worked on the case for the Swedish branch of the human rights group, said it was an "extremely worrying situation".

"It was only just over a year ago that Iran executed another Swedish citizen, Habib Chaab," she told AFP, referring to an Iranian-Swedish dissident executed in May 2023 after a conviction for "corruption on earth" for heading a rebel group.

Tehran "does not hesitate to execute citizens of other countries, including Swedish citizens," she added.

Governments, human rights groups and families of foreign nationals being held in Iran have accused Tehran of engaging in "hostage diplomacy".

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