The trial against Swedish national and EU employee Johan Floderus started on Saturday in Teheran with no observers from Sweden and the EU being allowed to attend.
Johan Floderus, 33, works for the European External Action Service (EEAS). As previously reported, he was arrested in April last year at the Tehran airport on his way back home from a trip with friends.
He has travelled throughout the region to study the languages, explore historic sites, and support humanitarian cooperation projects in Iran on behalf of the EU.
It was likely the first time an EU employee had been detained by Iran in this manner. Contrary to other detainees, he has no dual citizenship.
Presumably Iran wants to use him as a hostage in a prisoner exchange with Sweden. By now, he has been imprisoned for 603 days during difficult conditions, as his father told in a interview for the Guardian.
After first trying silent diplomacy, his family and friends started the #FreeJohanFloderus campaign to mobilize support for his release.
According to the Iranian judiciary’s news agency, he is accused of spying for the ‘Zionist regime’ (Israel) to harm the Islamic Republic.
He is also accused of ‘corruption on earth’, a religious offence which carries the maximum penalty of death.
In a statement yesterday, EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, rejected the allegations.
“As EU, we have been very clear from the beginning,” he wrote. “Mr. Floderus is innocent. There are absolutely no grounds for keeping Johan Floderus in detention. The EU continues to call for Johan Floderus to be freed immediately.”
The Swedish Foreign Minister, Tobias Billström, said that a Swedish diplomatic representative had arrived to the court but been denied to attend the trial.
“Sweden has reacted against this and requested to be allowed to attend the trial when it is resumed.”
Arriving to the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday morning, Billström said that Sweden considers all allegations against Floderus as groundless and wrongful. The Swedish Foreign Minster called on the Iranian government to release Floderus so that he can be reunited with his family as soon as possible.
He declined to speculate about a possible prisoner exchange with Sweden in case Floderus would be convicted.
“Our priority now is to ensure that a person from the Swedish embassy will be permitted to attend the trial to see that he’ll get a fair trial.”
Asked at the European Commission's press conference today if an EU representative could have better chances to attend the trial, a spokesperson told The Brussels Times that the EU has no delegation or embassy in Teheran since several years.
Instead, the EU is represented by the embassy of one of the EU member states. The absence of an EU delegation is not linked to EU’s sanctions policy against Iran.
Floderus is not the only Swedish national in Iranian prison. In the case of Ahmadreza Djalali, 52, a guest lecturer at VUB in Brussels with dual Swedish-Iranian citizenship, all efforts to free him or bring about his release in a prisoner exchange have failed until now and he is still languishing in Iranian prison.
Djalali was arrested in April 2016 by the Iranian security police when visiting Teheran to participate in a workshop in disaster medicine.
An Amnesty International petition for Djalali’s release gathered nearly 140,000 signatures in Belgium. He was sentenced to death on 21 October 2017.
UN observers have stated that the trial was unfair and called on Iran to cancel the death sentence and release Djalali.
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
