The execution of Djalali could be imminent: the blackmail of Tehran in the silence of the EU and Italy
On Tuesday, November 24, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde announced on her Twitter profile that she had contacted her Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, to ask Iran not to kill Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian medical researcher who also holds Swedish citizenship. sentenced to death for espionage. An appeal also joined yesterday by Sophie Wilmès, Belgian foreign minister.
Arrested in 2016 while in Iran for academic reasons, Djalali was accused of collaborating with the Israeli Mossad, passing them intelligence information. After a few months under arrest, he confessed to his crime and his confession was broadcast on TV. Shortly after, however, Djalali had circulated through his lawyers a letter in which he denounced that he had never worked for the Mossad or any other foreign intelligence agency, but instead ended up in prison for refusing to become an intelligence agent. Iranian in Europe.
Unfortunately, as also reported by Amnesty International , Ahmadreza Djalali in prison has lost many pounds and the level of his white blood cells is very low, which leads him to be subject to numerous infections, especially bacterial in nature. For this reason, appeals for his release have multiplied in recent years, including from the University of Eastern Piedmont, where Djalali worked for years and where the media campaign in favor of his immediate release began.
Now, Djalali's execution could be imminent, coincidentally with the opening, in Brussels, of the trial of an official of the Iranian embassy in Vienna, Assadolah Assadi, accused of terrorism for planning an attack in Paris, fortunately thwarted, against a group opposing the regime, the Iranian National Council of Resistance. A retaliation? Blackmail to get Assadi back? Exchanges of prisoners between Tehran and Western countries seem to be on the agenda, as in the cases of Roland Marchal and Kylie Moore-Gilbert (just yesterday).
And yesterday the appeal of some associations, including Fidu and the Global Committee for the Rule of Law "Marco Pannella" , addressed to the EU High Representative Josep Borrell to take action with Tehran. Unfortunately, at least so far, the voice of the EU and, obviously, of the Italian government, which has never publicly expressed itself in favor of Ahmadreza Djalali's release, has been dramatically lacking. An unfortunately emblematic ambiguity of Italian policy towards Tehran, especially if we consider that again this year, at the opening of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, Italy wanted to reaffirm its support at the forefront of the moratorium universal against the death penalty. In words, of course, it costs nothing …
The post Djalali's execution could be imminent: Tehran's blackmail in the silence of the EU and Italy appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/lesecuzione-di-djalali-potrebbe-essere-imminente-il-ricatto-di-teheran-nel-silenzio-dellue-e-dellitalia/ on Thu, 26 Nov 2020 04:37:00 +0000.