The New York Times, citing informed sources, reported on Monday, September 4th, that Johan Floderus, a 33-year-old Swedish national and employee of the European Union, has been detained in Iran for over 500 days. He traveled to Iran in spring last year for a personal tourist trip along with several fellow countrymen. On April 17, when he was trying to leave Iran, he was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.
The Iranian regime had announced the arrest of a Swedish citizen on charges of “spying” in July of last year.
Johan Floderus, who is currently held in Evin Prison, has a background of holding several positions within EU-related institutions. He has also appeared in a promotional campaign aimed at attracting Swedish youth to EU careers.
The New York Times spoke to six people with firsthand knowledge of the case. All requested anonymity, fearing a backlash for speaking about it. They denied that Mr. Floderus had been involved in espionage.
While refraining from commenting on the details of the incident, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in an email correspondence with the New York Times: ” A Swedish citizen — a man in his 30s — was detained in Iran in April 2022. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Sweden in Tehran are working on the case intensively.”
The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs added, “We understand that there is interest in this matter, but in our assessment, it would complicate the handling of the case if the ministry were to publicly discuss its actions.”
Since 2019, Mr. Floderus has been an assistant to Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs. In 2021, he also joined the European External Action Service, which combines the foreign affairs and defense departments of the European Union and is currently led by Josep Borrell.
Informed sources told the New York Times that this Swedish citizen had previously visited Iran without any problems as part of a European Union development program.
The report by the Islamic Republic last year also referred to Mr. Floderus’ previous trips to Iran as a reason for his “sinister activities.”
The European External Action Service stated that it is “closely following the case of a detained Swedish citizen in Iran,” but did not mention whether Mr. Floderus works for this institution or if he had previously traveled to Iran for EU-related matters.
Nabila Massrali, a spokesperson for the European External Action Service, said, “We have used every opportunity to raise this issue with Iranian authorities in order to secure the voluntary release of all arbitrarily detained EU citizens and will continue to do so.”
Mr. Floderus’s father has refrained from commenting on his son’s situation.
Relations between Iran and Sweden are very cold. In July of last year, a court in Sweden sentenced Hamid Nouri, a former judicial official of the Iranian regime, to life imprisonment for his involvement in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988.
One month after Mr. Floderus’s arrest, the Islamic Republic issued a death sentence for Ahmad Reza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish researcher, on fabricated and baseless charges such as “espionage” and “assisting in the assassination of nuclear scientists by Israel.”
In the same month, the regime executed Habib Asiod, an Iranian-Swedish citizen who had been abducted from Turkey in 2020.
The non-disclosure of the arrest of this 33-year-old Swedish diplomat by Swedish and EU authorities comes at a time when Western officials have repeatedly accused the regime of engaging in “hostage diplomacy” to gain political leverage.
In recent years, the Iranian regime has detained dual and foreign nationals on fabricated charges in pursuit of exchanging them for its arrested agents in Europe and the United States, or to use them as leverage to gain money and other benefits.
Last month, the United States agreed to release $6 billion of Iran’s blocked assets in South Korea in exchange for the freedom of five of its detained citizens in Iran.
In May Belgium released Tehran’s convicted terrorist diplomat, Assadollah Assadi. Assadi was convicted for organizing and commanding a terrorist attack targeting a NCRI rally near Paris back in 2018, later described as the biggest criminal act in Europe after World War II.
It is not unlikely that the Swedish government, after 500 days of silence, is seeking the release of Hamid Nouri and exchanging him for its own hostage.
