“Today is a dramatic birthday, the 50th, for Ahmad Reza Djalali. He spends it away from his family in Sweden, locked in a prison cell in Iran with a noose dangling dangerously close to him because several times his sentence to death was announced as imminent and then interrupted at the last minute. Djalali is a man of science, he is not in the least guilty of the accusations of espionage in favor of Israel that have been brought against him by the Iranian judicial authorities “. This was stated in an interview with Aki-Adnkronos International by the spokesman of Amnesty Italia, Riccardo Noury, commenting on the situation of the former researcher at the Center for Disaster Medicine (Crimedim) of the University of Eastern Piedmont, sentenced to death on 21 October 2017 and since then locked in a tiny, insect-infested cell away from his wife and two children who live in Stockholm. “Amnesty International continues to ask that he be released from prison, that the charges be canceled and that he be able to reunite with his family – continues Noury - and we are asking the same for many other detainees in Iran, with dual Iranian citizenship, but also with passports from European countries. such as Great Britain “.” Many of them are in prison with false accusations and it seems that they are in fact hostages used as pawns of exchange “, adds the spokesman, underlining that” the situation in Iranian prisons is dramatic: they are full of detainees politicians, human rights defenders including Nasrin Sotoudeh and in 2021 there was also a dangerous resurgence in the use of the death penalty with practically one execution per day on average “. Djalali, scientist born in Iran but residing in Sweden , was arrested in April 2016 while he was in his country of origin for work reasons. No evidence has ever been presented against him. In a letter written from prison in August 2017, he accused the Iranian authorities of wanting to avenge himself for his refusal to cooperate in collecting confidential information.
