The Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a statement on Friday, January 10, that Iranian authorities had informed the Swiss embassy in Tehran on December 10, 2024, that a 64-year-old Swiss man had been arrested on suspicion of “espionage.”
According to the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s statement, the citizen, who had not resided in Switzerland for the past 20 years and was living in South Africa, had traveled to Iran as a tourist.
The statement added that since being informed of the detention of its citizen, the Swiss embassy in Tehran had been in daily contact with Iranian authorities to obtain more information about his detention conditions and to gain access to him.
However, Iranian authorities, citing the “espionage-security” nature of the accusations against him during the initial investigation phase, did not approve the Swiss embassy’s requests.
According to the statement, on Thursday, January 9, the Swiss embassy in Tehran was informed that a Swiss citizen had “committed suicide” in prison.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry further stated that the Swiss government is seeking detailed and precise information about the reasons for the arrest of its citizen by the Iranian government, as well as a full investigation into the circumstances of his death.
According to the statement, the repatriation of the citizen’s body to Switzerland is a priority and is expected to take place “within the next few days.”
Previously, several regime-linked media outlets in Iran, citing a report from the regime’s Khabarfoori website on Thursday, January 9, wrote that the Swiss citizen, who had reportedly died by suicide in Semnan prison, had been arrested while “gathering information” in one of the cities of Semnan province.
According to the regime’s Tabnak website, citing Khabarfoori, “an informed security official” claimed that “a Swiss national” was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization while “gathering information and collecting soil samples in Iran’s central desert” at the same time as Israel’s attack on several locations in Iran, including in Shahroud.
According to Iranian state-affiliated media, Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, the head of the Semnan judiciary, claimed—without mentioning the Swiss citizen’s name—that he had “committed suicide” in prison.
Reuters noted that in recent years, the IRGC has detained dozens of dual nationals and foreign citizens, mostly on espionage and security-related charges.
According to the news agency, Switzerland plays a crucial mediating role between Washington and Tehran as the protector of U.S. interests in Iran, facilitating the exchange of messages between the two countries.
One of the suspicious deaths of political prisoners in Iranian prisons was that of Kavous Seyed-Emami, a dual-national and Iranian-Canadian university professor detained in Iran. He died in Evin Prison two weeks after his arrest, with Iranian authorities claiming that he had “hanged himself.”
At the same time as Seyed-Emami’s arrest, eight environmental activists, including Houman Jokar, Taher Ghadirian, Morad Tahbaz, Sepideh Kashani, and Niloufar Bayani, were also detained. Regarding this case, The Guardian reported that a journalist close to the IRGC had claimed that the arrested environmental activists had planted cameras and collected soil samples to identify sensitive locations used for Iran’s missile tests.
