Medical researcher Ahmadreza Djalali is to be moved to a different prison pending 'imminent' execution.
A medical researcher sentenced to death in Iran three years ago on a charge of spying — which he denies — is under threat of imminent execution, Nature has been told.
Ahmadreza Djalali, a scholar in disaster medicine who has dual Iranian–Swedish nationality, is nearing the end of a week of solitary confinement at Evin prison in Tehran, where he has been held since 2016. He is expected to be transferred to Rajai Shahr prison, west of Tehran on 1 December, where the execution could be carried out. This information is contained in a letter dated 24 November that carries the name of Mohammad Barae, understood to be a judge in Iran’s legal system.
Vida Mehrannia, Djalali’s wife, told Nature she had received a telephone call from him on 25 November in which he said he was being moved to solitary confinement, and then to a different prison to be executed.
“This letter looks to be a court order from a judge declaring that the death sentence is to be carried out,” says Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a scholar of Iran’s legal system based at SOAS University of London.
International tension
Djalali’s situation will not have been helped by the killing of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on 27 November near Tehran, says Hadi Ghaemi, a physicist and founder of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in New York City. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, an Iranian-Norwegian neuroscientist who leads the NGO Iran Human Rights, based in Oslo, agrees that Djalali’s situation is very serious.
Sweden’s foreign ministry is urging clemency, as are international observers. A spokesperson for Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde says the nation demands that the death penalty not be enforced. The two countries are understood to be in talks regarding the case.
However, in a statement published by the BBC, Iran’s government says that media reports are incorrect and warns countries not to interfere in what it says is an independent judicial process.
Nature asked to speak to Iran’s justice and foreign-affairs ministries, but e-mails and calls were not answered.
Djalali, who worked for the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, was arrested in 2016 on a research trip to Iran. He was charged with spying and was sentenced to death the following year by the Revolutionary Court, the body that hears the cases of people considered to be a threat to national security. The case went to the Supreme Court, Iran’s highest court of appeal, but the judges declined to change the sentence of death.
The prosecution claims that Djalali received academic positions, research projects and funding in Europe in exchange for spying on Iran for Israel — a charge he has consistently denied. A document attributed to him says that he has been tortured in prison, and that he thinks he is being punished for refusing a request from Iran’s government to spy on Europe. He is also said to have undergone hunger strikes in protest.
Support campaign
He is being supported by a campaign by 153 Nobel laureates. In response to the latest developments, the group urged Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to release him. The judiciary comes under the jurisdiction of the office of the supreme leader, Iran’s head of state.
“The attack on Ahmadreza Djalali is a tremendous assault to the academic community at large. It will have a chilling effect on international collaboration and trust,” says Karolinska president Ole Petter Ottersen.
Some observers say there is a possibility Djalali could be spared if Sweden’s government agrees to discuss a prisoner exchange, as other countries are doing.
Last week, Iran freed Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Islamic-studies researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia, who was arrested in September 2018 after attending an academic conference. According to media reports, Moore-Gilbert was released in exchange for three Iranian citizens imprisoned in Thailand.
In March 2020, the French government released Jalal Rohollahnejad, an Iranian engineer affiliated with the Wuhan National Laboratory of Electronics in China, in exchange for Iran’s release of French sociologist Roland Marchal of the university Sciences Po in Paris.
In December 2019, the United States freed Iranian biologist Masoud Soleimani in exchange for the release of Xiyue Wang, a US historian held in Iran.
Source: nature.com, M. Catanzaro, November 30, 2020
Urgent Action Update: Iranian-Swedish Doctor at Risk of Execution (Iran: UA 38.17)
On 24 November, Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali learned that prosecution authorities ordered for his death sentence for “corruption on earth” (efsad-e fel-arz) to be carried out. In a brief phone call the same day to his wife, he said he had been transferred to solitary confinement in section 209 of Evin prison in Tehran. He is at imminent risk of execution.
TAKE ACTION:
Write a letter in your own words or using the sample below as a guide to the government official listed below. You can also email, fax, call or Tweet them.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Head of the Judiciary Ebrahim Raisi
c/o Majid Takht Ravanchi
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran
622 Third Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212 687-2020 // Fax: 212 867 7086
Email: iran@un.int
Twitter: @Iran_UN
Salutation: Dear Ambassador
SAMPLE LETTER
Dear Mr Raisi,
On 24 November 2020, at the prosecutor’s office of Evin prison Ahmadreza Djalali, his family and lawyer were told that the prosecution authorities had issued an order to the office for implementation of sentences instructing for Ahmadreza Djalali’s death sentence to be carried out. Officials at the prosecutor’s office did not specify the execution date but said that the sentence will be carried out within a week, or no later than 1 December. Ahmadreza Djalali was subsequently transferred to solitary confinement in section 209 of Evin prison. On the same day, he told his wife who resides in Sweden (in a phone call lasting less than 2 minutes) this news and that he would be transferred to Raja’i Shahr prison in Karaj for the implementation of his sentence. This was also his first phone call to his family since mid-October 2020. Prison authorities had blocked his phone access citing orders by the Ministry of Intelligence to the prosecution authorities after he conducted an interview with a media outlet abroad. Based on information available to Amnesty International, the prosecution authorities said on 24 November that Ahmadreza Djalali’s death sentence should be carried out as all avenues for appeal, judicial review or pardon had been exhausted.
Ahmadreza Djalali was sentenced to death for “corruption on earth” (efsad-e fel-arz) in October 2017 after a grossly unfair trial before Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The court relied primarily on “confessions” that Ahmadreza Djalali says were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment while he was held in prolonged solitary confinement without access to a lawyer. These included threats to execute him, kill or otherwise harm his children (who live in Sweden), and his mother (who lives in Iran). Amnesty International has consistently held that that the offense of “corruption on earth” fails to meet requirements for clarity and precision needed in criminal law and breaches the principle of legality and legal certainty. On 9 December 2018, his lawyers learned that Branch 1 of the Supreme Court had upheld his death sentence without granting them an opportunity to file their defense submissions on his behalf. I ask you to immediately halt plans to execute Ahmadreza Djalali, quash his conviction and sentence, and immediately provide him access to his family and lawyers. Pending his release, ensure also that Ahmadreza Djalali is protected from torture and other ill-treatment, and order a prompt, independent, effective, and impartial investigation into his allegations of torture and other ill-treatment.
Yours sincerely,
Source: Amnesty International, November 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde