Swedish diplomat jailed in Iran ‘a pawn’

 Swedish diplomat Johan Floderus, imprisoned in Iran, is being used as a pawn in a political manoeuvre, his sister Ingrid Floderus said.

Floderus, was detained at Teheran airport in April 2022 following a visit to a friend working for the Swedish embassy in Iran, accused of spying for Israel and “corruption on earth” which carries the death penalty under Iran’s Islamic laws.

Floderus is one of many EU and Western citizens detained on trumped-up charges to obtain concessions from their governments in return for their release.

In this case, his arrest coincided with Sweden’s trial of Hamid Noury, an Iranian accused of mass executions of dissidents in Teheran in 1988. Floderus’s family now fear the worst following the death penalty call, although no date has been set for a final verdict.

He is held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where he has been on a hunger strike seven times in order to call his family.

Prison officers have warned that he will not speak to them again if he strikes again. His cell, which he shares with three others, has lighting 24 hours a day.

“I can see from pictures taken during his trial that he looks very different from the brother I know,” his sister told Euronews in Brussels at an event organised by the FreeJohanFloderus campaign.

He was very pale and looked much thinner, Ingrid said, as he is never allowed out and given very little food.

“He is an innocent man,” Ingrid said. “I don’t think that anyone really feels  my brother has done those crimes that he has been accused of.”

Meanwhile, officials in Stockholm and Brussels said they are “working tirelessly” to obtain his release.