Ahmadreza Jalali: Swedish-Iranian prisoner starts hunger strike

Expert on emergency medicine who lived in Stockholm has been on death row in Iran since 2017

Ahmadreza Jalali and family. Picture via Amnesty International

Ahmadreza Jalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic who has been facing execution in Iran for the past eight years, is to begin a hunger strike this week.

"The only way anyone can hear his voice in the world is to just start a hunger strike" on Wednesday, said his wife, Vida Mehrannia.

Last month, Iran released two Swedes in exchange for Hamid Nouri, 63, a former Iranian prisons official who was given 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.

Mr Jalali, imprisoned in Tehran's notorious Evin prison after an espionage conviction, missed out on the swap.

In an audio message on June 19, Mr Jalali criticised Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for his decision "to leave me behind under huge risk of being executed".

A rally supporting Swedish-Iranian doctor and researcher Ahmadreza Jalali in Stockholm, Sweden, on May 14. EPA

Ms Mehrannia said in a statement to AFP on Tuesday that "as a medical doctor, Ahmadreza knows all too well that his fragile physical state makes a hunger strike potentially fatal, but he sees no other option".

She said he suffered from "heart arrhythmias, bradycardia, hypotension, chronic gastritis, anaemia, and extreme weight loss from his previous two hunger strikes".

"This physician, loving husband and father of two wants to be reunited with his family," she said.

"He wants to serve society once more as a dedicated doctor. He wants to be recognised and treated as a human being again.

"Ahmadreza is now pleading to the world for help. He needs this endless brutality to end."

The Iranian authorities announced they would execute Mr Jalali in 2022 but that was halted after his lawyers appealed.

Iran had previously threatened to execute Mr Jalali in 2020, as a Belgian court was considering verdicts in the case of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian spymaster, who was accused of plotting to blow up a dissidents’ rally in France.

The threat of immediate execution was lifted, even after Assadi was convicted and jailed for 20 years.

Last year, when Mr Nouri was convicted for his role in the prison massacres in Iran, the Iranian media released a propaganda video with Mr Jalali’s forced “confessions”.

He was told again in December 2023 that he would be executed.

Amnesty International protesters demonstrate against the death penalty in Iran for Ahmadreza Jalali, in Turin, Italy. EPA

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

"We had the choice of either bringing Johan and Saeed home, or dropping everything. It's the brutal truth, but I have a lot of respect for her disappointment," Mr Kristersson said of Ms Mehrannia to SVT on Tuesday.

She is scheduled to have a meeting with Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom on July 2 to discuss her husband's case.

Iran has in recent years been accused of detaining dual and foreign citizens as hostages to use as bargaining chips to extract concessions.

Last year, five US citizens held by Iran were freed in return for Washington issuing a waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar.