Ahmadreza Djalali

IRAN: UPDATES ON THE DJALALI CASE

August 7, 2019:

In a telephone conversation with his family, the Iranian-Swedish scientist and disaster medicine expert, Dr. Ahmad Reza Jalali (Djalali) has revealed that he has been under pressure to admit new charges and participate in another "forced confession" in front of cameras. Speaking to Radio Farda on Saturday, August 3, Jalali's wife, Vida Mehran Nia disclosed that her husband had been taken to solitary confinement outside Tehran's notorious prison, Evin. "My husband told me on the phone that he had been under heavy pressure to submit to a forced confession," Ms. Mehran Nia said, adding, "They (intelligence agents) have threatened him to either admit new accusations or be prepared for the execution of death penalty issued against him."
In an unexpected move last Monday, Ahmad-Reza Jalali was mysteriously transferred to an unknown place of detention. While on an official academic visit hosted by Tehran University, Jalali 47 was accused of “collaboration with a hostile government” and arrested on April 2016. Since then, he has been kept behind bars at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. He was later shown on state TV in December 2017, confessing to providing information to Israel's Mossad spy agency about Iranian military and nuclear scientists, including two who were assassinated in 2010. In a voice recording that was published on YouTube on 22 October, Ahmad-Reza Jalali is heard saying that, while in solitary confinement, he was twice forced to make “confessions” in front of a video camera by reading out statements pre-written by his interrogators.
Amnesty International and other rights groups have condemned Jalali's detention, saying it follows a pattern of Iran detaining dual nationals and expatriates indefinitely without due process. Immediately after the Islamic Republic's Supreme Court upheld Jalali's death sentence, Sweden granted him citizenship, soliciting a protest from Iran. Iran does not recognize dual nationality.