Swedish Man Detained in Iran, Foreign Ministry Says

A Swedish national in his 20s has been jailed in Iran since early this month, Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said on January 15, with media reports saying the man was the subject of an international arrest warrant relating to a murder case.

The ministry said in a statement that the man "was detained in Iran in early January".

"The embassy in Tehran is in contact with local authorities. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in contact with relatives in Sweden," it added, without providing further details. 

Swedish broadcaster TV4 reported that the man was sought under an international warrant on suspicions of "accessory to murder" and weapons offenses in Sweden in relation to a deadly shooting last summer.

According to the VLT newspaper, a district court in Sweden had ordered the man remanded in custody in absentia in late December.

Relations between Tehran and Stockholm have been tense since 2019, when a former Iranian official was arrested in Sweden for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s.

In December last year, a Swedish appeals court upheld the life sentence for the former official, Hamid Noury.

Tehran has protested the sentence and vowed to seek Noury’s release.

Western governments and rights groups have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of taking dual and foreign nationals hostage for the sole purpose of using them in prisoner swaps or as a bargaining chip in international negotiations.

In December, Johan Floderus, a Swedish EU employee who has been imprisoned since April 2022, went on trial in Iran.

Floderus, 33, is accused of spying for Israel and "corruption on Earth," a charge that can carry the death penalty.

An Iranian-Swedish academic, Ahmadreza Djalali, was arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to death on espionage charges following what human rights organizations called a “grossly unfair” trial. 

He remains under threat of execution.

In May 2023, Iranian authorities executed Habib Chaab, an Iranian-Swedish dual citizen accused of leading an Arab separatist group Tehran blamed for a deadly attack on a military parade in 2018.

Chaab, who had been living in Sweden for more than a decade, was abducted during a visit to Turkey in 2020 and smuggled to Iran.