Swedish-Iranian doctor held in Iran near death after 'cruel mistreatment': UN experts

A Swedish-Iranian doctor detained by Iran is “near death” after months in solitary confinement and other “cruel mistreatment,” a group of United Nations experts said Thursday. 

Ahmadreza Djalali “has been held in prolonged solitary confinement for over 100 days with the constant risk of his imminent execution laying over his head with prison officials shining bright lights in his small cell 24 hours a day, to deprive him of sleep,” said the rights experts, who include members of the UN’s working group on arbitrary detention. 

Djalali, an Iranian-born lecturer at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, was arrested during a 2016 business trip to Iran. He was later charged with espionage and accused of sharing classified information with Israel’s spy agency.

In a letter written from prison in 2017, Djalali denied Iran’s espionage allegations and said he was actually being held in retaliation for refusing to use his academic connections to spy on European countries.