Ahmadreza Djalali

IRAN - Appeal against the execution of Ahmadreza Djalali, a scientist who also worked in Italy.

November 24, 2020:

In a phone call to his wife today, Ahmadreza Djalali (Jalali), an Iranian-Swedish doctor and academic on death row in Evin Prison, told her that he had been transferred to solitary confinement and will soon be transferred to Rajai Shahr Prison where his death sentence is to be carried out.

Iran Human Rights once again calls on international officials, the governments of the European Union in particular, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic to halt his execution and allow Djalali to return to his family in Sweden.

IHR Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “Like other dual-nationals, Ahmadreza Djalali is a victim of a state hostage-taking by the Islamic Republic. He was sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial based on fabricated charges. We call on the international community to utilise all their diplomatic means to put intensified pressure on the Islamic Republic to halt the death sentence of Ahmadreza Djalali.”

Emphasising the inhumanity of the death penalty itself, Iran Human Rights considers Dr Djalali’s death sentence to be the result of conspiracy theories by Iran’s security officials to charge dual-nationals with espionage, pressure and torture them to obtain forced confessions and violate their right to a fair trial.

Ahmadreza Djalali who had travelled to Iran at the official invitation of the University of Tehran, was arrested by Ministry of Intelligence agents on 24 April 2016 and spent three months in the Ministry’s detention centre.

Initially charged with “collaborating with hostile states”, he was later convicted of “moharebeh (enmity against God) through espionage for Israel” by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran which was also upheld by the Supreme Court.

In December last year, 134 Nobel laureates sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Kamenei asking that Djalali "could go home to his wife and children and continue his academic work for the benefit of humanity".

Djalali is a physician and researcher, expert in emergency medical procedures to be adopted in cases of nuclear, chemical or biological attacks. Today he is 48 years old. He has worked in various European universities, including, between 2012 and 2016 at the Interdepartmental Research Center in Disaster Medicine (Crimedim) of the University of Eastern Piedmont.

For a broader reconstruction of the Djalali case, see HoC 03/08/2019, 21/08/2019, 25/08/2019, 18/12/2019.

https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4505/