Wife of Ahmadreza Jalali, dual-national prisoner sentenced to death in Iran: 3,000 days have passed since his kidnapping

Vida Mehran-Nia, the wife of Ahmadreza Jalali, an Iranian-Swedish doctor, wrote in a post on social media platform "X" that "3,000 days have passed since Ahmadreza was taken hostage by the Iranian government." In this post, Ms. Mehran-Nia addressed the Prime Minister of Sweden. She also criticized the Belgian and Swedish governments for abandoning Mr. Jalali in an interview with the Belgian newspaper "De Morgen," published on Friday, July 22. Meanwhile, Barry Rosen, a former American hostage in Iran, wrote on social media X that he and several other families of European hostages in Iran attended a session in the European Parliament in Brussels alongside Vida Mehran-Nia to urge the European Union to confront hostage-taking policies and hold perpetrators accountable. Ahmadreza Jalali traveled to Tehran in the spring of 2016 at the invitation of the University of Tehran for a lecture and was arrested on charges labeled as "espionage" by the security apparatus of the Islamic Republic. Subsequently, he was sentenced to death for the same charges in court. This is despite Mr. Jalali and his wife repeatedly denying these allegations. This dual-national prisoner had previously gone on hunger strike in protest against the court's ruling and the imminent execution order. Recently, Ahmadreza Jalali criticized in an audio file addressed to Ulf Kristersson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, for being "left alone" during the prisoner exchange in Iran. He pointed out the release of Johan Flodros, a Swedish citizen, and Saeed Azizi, a dual-national Iranian-Swedish citizen, who were exchanged with Hamid Nouri, emphasizing, "I believe my remaining in Iran is a clear discrimination." Hamid Nouri, a former deputy warden of Gohardasht prison, was sentenced to life imprisonment, the highest penalty under Swedish law, for his involvement in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s. The release of Hamid Nouri and his return to Iran sparked a wave of protests and public outrage among Iranians and widespread reactions from political and human rights figures. In this context, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer, human rights activist, and Sakharov Prize winner, expressed concern in a letter to the European Parliament regarding the situation of this Iranian-Swedish dual-national prisoner at risk of execution in Iran on Tuesday, July 19. Ms. Sotoudeh noted in her letter that Ahmadreza Jalali has been imprisoned in Iran for years, stating that the treatment he receives in prison is not much different from the execution of his sentence, and that he has been transferred to solitary confinement three times for the execution of his sentence, the last time coinciding with the start of Hamid Nouri's trial in Sweden. Nasrin Sotoudeh described the Swedish government's indifference to Ahmadreza Jalali in negotiations with the Islamic Republic regarding the release of two Swedish prisoners in Iran as "regrettable, concerning, and a clear discrimination." In her letter, she urged the European Parliament to use all its official and legal capacities to secure Ahmadreza Jalali's release.