Inside a tiny prison cell in Iran, an expert on disaster medicine and a citizen of Sweden named Ahmadreza Djalali is dying.
At least, what is left of him is dying. This innocent man has spent four months in solitary confinement on a daily ration of 100 grams of bread. His possessions consist of a thin blanket and a picture of his wife and their two children. A prison photo of Djalali resembles a survivor of Nazi concentration camps.
Djalali’s jailers have made it clear to his family that he will die unless Belgium agrees to swap him for Assadollah Assadi, a senior officer of Iran’s civilian intelligence service. Assadi, who worked undercover as a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, served as the operational commander for a foiled plot to bomb a Paris rally by exiled Iranian opposition groups. The spy is serving 20 years in a Belgian prison for his role in that terrorist plot. If successful, the attack might have killed hundreds, including Americans such as Rudy Giuliani who were in attendance.
Djalali was the head of the Disaster Management Section of the Iranian Ministry of Welfare and Social Justice before moving with his wife and children to Stockholm in 2008, where he worked at the Karolinska Medical University. Concurrently, he held research positions in Italy and Belgium, directed two European projects on threat identification and emergency response of hospitals to terrorist attacks, and served as a coordinator of the Iranian National Center for Medical Response to hazardous materials incidents.
In 2016, Djalali was on a research visit in Iran when he was detained by security forces. Prior to this event, two officers from Iranian military intelligence approached him in Stockholm with a request for information about European critical infrastructure and counterterrorism operational plans. Djalali refused to cooperate. In October 2017, Judge Abolqasem Salavati, known as the “hanging judge,” sentenced Djalali to death on the charge of “sowing corruption on earth.” This started an international campaign on Djalali’s behalf by world leaders, academics, and human rights organizations.
Djalali’s expertise could have been of great value to Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic, but security forces had other plans. He was taken hostage in order to be exchanged for one of the arrested operatives of Iran’s terrorist network abroad. British-Australian scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was serving a 10-year sentence in Iran, was swapped last November for three Iranian men imprisoned for a foiled attempt to assassinate Israeli diplomats. In July of last year, U.S. Navy veteran Michael White was exchanged for two Iranian men accused of illegal activities inside the United States.
Everybody who has been involved in Djalali’s case is holding their breath. His little son in Stockholm believes that Ahmadreza cannot return from Iran because of the pandemic. He thinks that the vaccine will allow his father to come home soon.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and the co-chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists: http://concernedscientists.org/.
