Who’s the doctor facing execution in Iran?
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Vida Mehrannia is trying to save her husband’s life. Iran is scheduled to put him to death within nine days — by May 21.
To Iran, the 50-year-old Ahmad Reza Jalali is a spy for Israel. To his colleagues, he is a respected physician specialized in disaster medicine, a most demanding field. To Mehrannia, he is a beloved husband.
“It’s a nightmare,” she told The Associated Press from Stockholm, where she lives with her 10-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter who have not seen their father in the six years since his arrest. “They want to sacrifice my husband.”
Mehrannia pins her fading hopes on Jalali’s Swedish citizenship and Stockholm’s attempts to push for his release. The extent of those efforts is unclear, though the Swedish foreign minister called her Iranian counterpart, last week, and, along with the European Union, expressed categorial opposition to the death penalty and demanded Jalali be released.
But it appears that Jalali’s very ties to Sweden are what landed him in an Iranian prison.
In Iran, some foreigners are pawns, both in Tehran’s internal political rivalries and in tensions between Tehran and Western capitals, analysts say. A pattern of Westerners being picked up has grown increasingly visible since the collapse of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
On Wednesday, Iran said it detained two unidentified Europeans just hours after the European Union envoy touched down in the capital in a last-ditch effort to save the tattered atomic accord.
Iran has imprisoned at least a dozen dual nationals in recent years. Most of them are held on widely disputed spying charges.