It is feared that the Iranian authorities are holding hostage and threatening to execute Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish doctor visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), for “oblige Belgium and Sweden to hand over two imprisoned former Iranian officials”, denounces Thursday Amnesty International Belgium. According to the NGO, the evidence is accumulating in this direction.
These men are Asadollah Asadi, a former Iranian diplomat who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Belgium for his role in a foiled bomb attack in France in 2018, and Hamid Nouri, a former prison official, on trial in Sweden for his alleged role. in the 1988 prison massacres in Iran, says Amnesty. According to research by the NGO, since at least the end of 2020, Professor Djalali’s situation has turned into a hostage-taking at the time of the opening of the trial of Asadollah Asadi in Belgium.
Then, on May 4, “a few days following the prosecuting authorities in Sweden requested life imprisonment for Hamid Nouri”, Iranian state media reported that the execution of Ahmadreza Djalali would take place on May 21. These items and several items “prove overwhelmingly that Ahmadreza Djalali is at risk of the death penalty in retaliation, which the Iranian authorities also seem to consider necessary to deter other foreign states from arresting and prosecuting Iranian officials”says Amnesty International Belgium.
Other evidence suggests that the Iranian authorities intend to exchange Ahmadreza Djalali for Asadollah Asadi and/or Hamid Nouri.
Amnesty calls for an investigation “efficient, transparent and independent”. Iranian officials must also “to renounce all plans to execute Ahmadreza Djalali, release him immediately and grant him reparations for the harm he has suffered”.
