Iranian authorities have accused a Swedish EU diplomat, held in a Tehran prison for more than 600 days, of conspiring with Iran’s arch-enemy Israel, the judiciary said Sunday (10 December).
“Johan Floderus is accused of extensive measures against the security of the country, extensive intelligence cooperation with the Zionist regime and corruption on earth,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency said.
Corruption on earth is one of Iran’s most serious offences and carries a maximum penalty of death.
Floderus, 33, was arrested on 17 April 2022 at Tehran airport as he was returning to Iran from a trip with friends.
The Swede, who works for the European Union diplomatic service, is being held in Tehran’s Evin prison.
His arrest came while an Iranian national, Hamid Noury, was being tried in Sweden over the mass executions of dissidents in Tehran in 1988 – ultimately receiving a life sentence in July 2022.
The Court of Appeals in Sweden is expected to announce a verdict in the case on 19 December.
Mizan published photos of a handcuffed Floderus, who is being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison, appearing before judges in a pale blue prison uniform as the charges were read.
The prosecution claimed Floderus had gathered information on Iran’s “nuclear and enrichment programmes”, carried out “subversive projects” for the benefit of Israel and established a network of “agents of the Swedish
intelligence service”.
It further claimed he was involved in “intelligence cooperation and communication with the European Union” and exiled opposition group, the People’s Mujahedin (MEK), according to Mizan.
The next date of the trial was not yet known.
EU’s top foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called Sunday for his immediate release, saying “there are absolutely no grounds for keeping Johan Floderus in detention.”
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom added: “There is no basis whatsoever for keeping Johan Floderus in detention, let alone bringing him to trial.”
Other prisoners
Tehran-Stockholm ties soured after the execution in May of Iranian-Swedish dissident Habib Chaab, convicted of “corruption on earth” after being vanished during a visit to Turkey in 2020.
Academic Ahmadreza Djalali, another Iranian-Swede, was arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to death on espionage charges. He remains under threat of execution.
Several other Europeans are detained in Iran, including four French citizens.
One of them, Louis Arnaud, was sentenced in November to five years in prison for propaganda and endangering the security of the Iranian state.
Iran’s relations with the EU improved after a nuclear deal in 2015 that lifted sanctions and looked set to boost trade.
But they have worsened considerably since the US effectively scrapped the deal in 2018.
The EU has imposed new sanctions on Iran after accusing it of providing Russia with drones for use in the Ukraine war, which Tehran denies.
It also sanctioned Iran over its response to nationwide protests last year triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman arrested in September 2022 for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women.
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Renowned Chinese doctor and activist Gao Yaojie who exposed the AIDS virus epidemic in rural China in the 1990s died Sunday at the age of 95 at her home in the United States.
Gao’s outspokenness about the virus outbreak — which some gauged to have infected tens of thousands — embarrassed the Chinese government and drove her to live in self-exile for over a decade in Manhattan, New York.
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Columbia University professor Andrew J. Nathan, an expert in Chinese politics who had Gao’s legal power of attorney and managed some of her affairs, confirmed her death.
Gao became China’s most well-known AIDS activist after speaking out against blood-selling schemes that infected thousands with HIV, mainly in her home province of Henan in central China. Her contributions were ultimately acknowledged to a certain extent by the Chinese government, which was forced to grapple with the AIDS crisis well into the 2000s.
Gao’s work received recognition from international organizations and officials. She moved to the U.S. in 2009, where she began holding talks and writing books about her experiences.
She told the Associated Press in a previous interview that she withstood government pressure and persisted in her work because “everyone has the responsibility to help their own people. As a doctor, that’s my job. So it’s worth it.”
She said she expected Chinese officials to “face the reality and deal with the real issues — not cover it up.”
A roving gynecologist who used to spend days on the road treating patients in remote villages, Gao met her first HIV patient in 1996 — a woman who had been infected from a transfusion during an operation. Local blood bank operators would often use dirty needles, and after extracting valuable plasma from farmers, would pool the leftover blood for future transfusions — a disastrous method almost guaranteed to spread viruses such as HIV.
At the time, Gao investigated the crisis by traveling to people’s homes. She would sometimes encounter devastating situations where parents were dying from AIDS and children were being left behind. Some estimates put the number of HIV infections from that period at tens of thousands, though no national survey was undertaken as the government was trying to conceal the crisis.
Gao delivered food, clothes and medicine to ailing villagers. She spoke out about the AIDS epidemic, capturing the attention of local media and angering local governments, which often backed the reckless blood banks. Officials repeatedly tried to prevent her from traveling abroad, where she was being celebrated for her work.
In 2001, the government refused to issue her a passport to go to the U.S. to accept an award from a United Nations group. In 2007, Henan officials kept her under house arrest for about 20 days to prevent her from traveling to Beijing to get a U.S. visa to receive another award. They were eventually overruled by the central government, which allowed her to leave China. Once in Washington, D.C., Gao thanked then-President Hu Jintao for allowing her to travel.
Gao was born on Dec. 19, 1927, in the eastern Shandong province. She grew up during a tumultuous time in China’s history, which included a Japanese invasion and a civil war that brought the Communist Party to power under Mao Zedong.
Her family moved to Henan, where she studied medicine at a local university. During the Cultural Revolution, a turbulent decade beginning in 1966, she endured beatings from Maoist “red guards” due to her family’s previous “landlord” status. She remained critical of Mao into her later years.
After news of her death circulated on Monday, Chinese social media was flooded with messages of condolences, while some criticized her move to the U.S. and her stance against the Chinese government.
“We can say Dr Gao Yaojie has dedicated everything to AIDS patients,” wrote a commenter on the social media platform Weibo, “and people with a conscience will always remember her.”
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Mistreanu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Associated Press researcher Wanqing Chen and writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
Haaretz
