Sweden urges Iran to call up off execution of medical researcher

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Tuesday she had spoken to her Iranian counterpart to formally object to the planned execution of an Iranian-Swedish professor.

Ms Linde wrote on Twitter that she had been touching Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif subsequent reports that Iran was preparing to carry out the execution of Ahmadreza Djalali, a specialist in emergency medicine who was simply charged with spying.

"Sweden denounces the death penalty and is attempting to not have the sentence against Djalali carried out," Ms Linde wrote on Twitter.

Djalali, who formerly worked on Stockholm in the Karolinska Institute, a medical university, was arrested during a visit to Iran on April 2016.

In October 2017, he was sentenced to death after being found guilty of moving information about several Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, which led to the scientists' assassinations.

While imprisoned, he was granted Swedish citizenship in February 2018, weeks after his loss of life sentence was confirmed by Iran's Supreme Court.

Djalali claims he's being punished for refusing to spy for Iran while employed in Europe.

His legal representatives also claimed these were blocked from presenting submissions prior to the Supreme Court hearing.

The imprisoned academic has been transferred to solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, and his wife indicated that the execution was imminent.

Barbro Elm, a good spokeswoman for Sweden's foreign ministry, told AFP they were aware of the studies of the "impending execution of the sentence" and were trying to clarify them.

Djalali's death sentence possesses been widely condemned by human rights groupings and simply by UN human rights specialists, with Amnesty International repeatedly phoning for Djalali to be freed.

“It really is appalling that in spite of repeated cell phone calls from UN people rights experts to quash Ahmadreza Djalali’s loss of life sentence and launch him, the Iranian authorities have got instead decided to push because of this irreversible injustice. They need to immediately halt any plans to execute Ahmadreza Djalali and end their shocking assault on his right to existence," Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We ask members of the foreign community to immediately intervene, including through their embassies on Tehran, to save Ahmadreza Djalali's lifestyle before it is too later," she added.