E.U. Official Held in Iran Prison in Brutal Conditions, Family Says

Ten months with no communication together with his household. Three hundred days in solitary confinement. A cell that’s absolutely lit across the clock.

These are a few of situations confronted by Johan Floderus, a European Union official from Sweden who was arrested in Iran in April final 12 months and has been held hostage since, his household revealed on Sunday.

Last week The New York Times was the primary to report on his incarceration at Tehran’s notorious Evin jail, after E.U. and Swedish authorities stored it underneath wraps for greater than 500 days.

Now the household has gone public, sharing particulars of Mr. Floderus’s detainment to boost consciousness and rally help.

On Sunday, Mr. Floderus, who rose within the E.U. civil service to grow to be a member of the diplomatic corps, turned 33 in Iran’s custody, in what seems to be one other case of hostage-taking to exert stress for the discharge of Iranian prisoners or different concessions from the West.

Mr. Floderus’s household stated Sunday in an announcement that it was beginning a public marketing campaign to deliver him dwelling, following within the footsteps of the households of different foreigners or twin Iranian residents whom the federal government has detained in recent times.

The household stated Mr. Floderus’s rights had been being flagrantly violated. He is permitted solely three and a half hours of recent air per week, they stated, is unduly restricted in receiving letters from family or sending correspondence and has been granted only a handful of visits by Swedish diplomats in Tehran since he was arrested.

“He has been allowed to make, on average, one short phone call per month starting in February,” the assertion stated, including that Mr. Floderus “had to go on hunger strike to be allowed to make several of these calls, which have to be in English and monitored.”

Mr. Floderus’s case is uncommon due to his skilled background, which makes him a high-value prisoner in what consultants describe as an lively “hostage diplomacy” superior by Iran.

Before becoming a member of the European Union’s diplomatic corps, Mr. Floderus traveled to Iran on official bloc enterprise for humanitarian initiatives, his household stated on Sunday. He had been on a vacationer go to in April final 12 months when he was arrested on the Tehran airport on his approach in another country.

In the only video name Mr. Floderus has been allowed up to now, final month, he made a “desperate plea” to his household to step up their efforts for his launch, the assertion stated, including that Mr. Floderus is harmless of any wrongdoing.

The Iranian authorities, in an announcement in July 2022, introduced that that they had arrested a Swedish citizen for espionage and claimed that his earlier journey within the nation confirmed he was there on nefarious enterprise.

Mr. Floderus’s continued detention in Iran places the European Union and Sweden in a tough spot, compounded by the truth that they stored it secret for such a very long time, seemingly with out making any actual progress towards his launch.

Sweden has convicted and imprisoned a high-profile former Iranian judicial official for ordering the deaths of hundreds of individuals within the Eighties, and Swedish-Iranian relations are at a nadir.

Apart from Mr. Floderus, Iran stated it deliberate to execute an Iranian-Swedish scientist, Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been held since 2016 on murky expenses of spying and aiding Israel in assassinating nuclear scientists, accusations that he denied in May final 12 months. That month, it executed one other Swedish-Iranian, the dissident Habib Chaab, who had been dwelling in Sweden for greater than a decade and was kidnapped throughout a go to to Turkey in 2020 and smuggled to Iran.

The European Union has been attempting to revive a nuclear cope with Iran, and a number of other high-level officers have visited Tehran, all through Mr. Floderus’s incarceration. The dynamics and context of those diplomatic exchanges and the continued engagement with the Iranian authorities at the moment are underneath scrutiny provided that an E.U. worker is imprisoned in Iran.

“I want to stress that I personally, all my team at all levels — European institutions in close coordination with the Swedish authorities, which have the first responsibility of consular protection — and with his family, have been pushing the Iranian authorities to release him,” Josep Borrell Fontelles, the E.U.’s high diplomat, stated final week after The New York Times revealed Mr. Floderus’s arrest.

“Every time we had diplomatic meetings, at all levels, we have put the issue on the table. Relentlessly,” he added.