Wife of hunger strike prisoner in Iran ‘disappointed’ after meeting Swedish official

Ahmadreza Jalali’s spouse says his pulse is weak, blood pressure low and he is suffering from several illnesses

The wife of an Iranian-Swedish academic on hunger strike in an Iranian prison on Tuesday said she was “very disappointed” after meeting Sweden’s Foreign Minister to press him to help secure her spouse’s release.

Dual-citizen, Ahmadreza Jalali who is a professor of medicine was arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to death on espionage charges, accusations his family say are baseless.

Mr Jalali has been under the threat of execution in Iran since 2017 and began a hunger strike on June 26.

“They told me they are following the case,” his wife Vida Mehrannia said after she and her daughter met Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom.

“They didn’t clarify anything. I’m very disappointed.”

On June 15, Tehran freed two Swedes, Johan Floderus, an EU diplomat who had been held in Iran since April 2022, and Saeed Azizi, who was arrested in November 2023, in exchange for Hamid Noury, 63, a former Iranian prison official serving a life sentence in Sweden.

But Mr Jalali, who was granted Swedish nationality while in jail, was left out of the swap.

“His pulse is very weak. His blood pressure is low. He is suffering from multiple illnesses,” his wife told reporters in front of a small crowd who came to support her.

The group chanted “free Jalali” and accused Sweden of kowtowing to Iran by allowing a “dictator” to impose the terms of his release.

Stockholm insists it did everything in its power to free Mr Jalali in the June prisoner swap but Tehran refuses to discuss his case, as the country does not recognise dual nationality.

Mr Billstrom said he “deeply empathises with the Jalali family’s hopelessness”.

“But I don’t want to get into the specifics of what was said in the meeting,” he added.

Ms Mehrannia, meanwhile, vowed to keep fighting for her husband’s release. “I hope Sweden responds, after eight years and three months,” she said.

In May, Iran hanged another Swedish-Iranian, Habib Chaab, on a terrorism conviction, drawing strong condemnation from Stockholm.

Iran executes more people yearly than any other nation except China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.