Sweden Calls for Immediate Release of EU Employee on Trial in Iran

Sweden's prime minister has said that the Scandinavian country demanded the “immediate release” of a Swedish EU employee imprisoned in Iran for 20 months.

Johan Floderus “is arbitrarily deprived of his liberty, without any factual basis,” Ulf Kristersson told a news conference in Stockholm on December 11, after the Iranian judiciary held the first hearing in the trial of the 33-year-old Swedish citizen.

Mizanonline.ir news website, which is affiliated with the judiciary, said that Floderus is facing charges of spying for Israel and "corruption on Earth," a crime that carries the death penalty.

The news website published images of Floderus and his lawyers in the courtroom.

As he arrived at an EU meeting in Brussels on November 11, Sweden's Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Stockholm considers the charges against Floderus “unfounded and false.”

Billstrom also said that he is in contact with the Islamic Republic to understand why the Swedish chargé d'affaires in Tehran was not given access to the opening of Billstrom’s trial, and to "make sure that he would be allowed to attend when the trial resumes."

"The important thing in this situation is to protect the interests of Johan Floderus and our top priority is to make sure that a Swedish person from the embassy is allowed to be present at the trial so we can make sure that he gets a fair trial," Billstrom told reporters.

No date has been given for the resumption of the trial.

On November 10, EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for Floderus’s immediate release, saying "there are absolutely no grounds” for keeping him in detention.

Floderus, who had been working for the European Union’s diplomatic corps, is being held in Tehran's Evin prison.

He was detained at Tehran airport in April 2022 as he was returning to Iran from a trip with friends.

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.

Relations between Stokholm and Tehran have been tense since 2019, when Sweden arrested a former Iranian official, Hamid Noury, for his involvement in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s. 

Noury was sentenced to life in prison last year, prompting the Islamic Republic to recall its envoy to Sweden in protest.