An Iranian court begun hearing the case of a Swedish national working for the European Union who was detained last year, according to Sweden’s foreign minister.
Johan Floderus, a Swedish citizen working for the EU, was detained in April 2022 while on holiday in Iran for, his family claims, spying, but “without any justifiable cause or due process.”
Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom stressed that he has “been informed that the trial of Johan Floderus has begun in Tehran,” he did not specify exactly what Floderus was accused of.
Relations between Sweden and Iran have remained tense since 2019, when Sweden arrested a former Iranian official for his involvement in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s, and Hamid Nouri was subsequently sentenced to life in prison. Many human rights groups and Western governments now accuse the Islamic Republic of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges.
Nevertheless, Tehran maintains that such arrests are based on the country’s penal code and denies detaining people on political grounds.
