Sweden's Foreign Minister Tobias Billström has publicly admitted that there were serious shortcomings in the country's travel advice regarding Iran following the recent controversial prisoner exchange deal with Tehran.
The Swedish Foreign Minister has publicly admitted that there were serious shortcomings in the travel advice regarding Iran following the recent controversial prisoner exchange agreement between Iran and Sweden.
The exchange involved convicted war criminal Hamid Nouri, who was serving a life sentence in Sweden for his role in a mass execution of prisoners serving time in Iran in 1988. Nouri was released in exchange for Swedish EU diplomat Johan Floderus and Swedish-Iranian Saeed Azizi.
“At the time Johan Floders went to Iran, there was no travel advisory for Iran,” Billström acknowledged in a statement on Platform X on Sunday.
“The decision to advise against non-essential travel to Iran was made on 28 April 2022, 11 days after Johan Floders was detained in Iran. A complete recommendation to avoid travel to Iran was then issued on 23 June 2022,” Billström added.
(From left) Former Iranian government official Nouri, Swedish diplomat Johan Floderus, and dual Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi
This admission highlights serious shortcomings in Sweden's official guidelines regarding the safety and security of its nationals traveling to Iran, an error that has been particularly costly in light of the detention of Swedish dual nationals in Iran over the past few years, including the arbitrary arrest of Ahmadreza Jalili in 2016. Jalili was also excluded from the prisoner exchange agreement.
Jalili was arrested in 2016 while visiting Iran as an academic, accused of espionage, and subsequently tried on trumped-up charges and sentenced to death without due process of law.
This oversight raises broader questions about the inaction of Swedish authorities, who delayed issuing a warning against all travel to Iran until June 2023, despite clear threats from Iranian authorities in May 2022 in retaliation for Nouri's trial in Sweden. On May 19, 2022, Amnesty International issued a public statement warning that Iran was threatening to execute Ahmadreza Jalali in retaliation for the prosecution of Hamid Nouri.
Most Western countries have issued strict travel warnings to their citizens against traveling to Iran, but Iran routinely arrests ordinary travelers and holds them effectively hostage in an effort to pressure Western countries into making concessions.
“State media articles published on May 4, 2022, are further evidence that the Iranian authorities are trying to use Ahmadreza Jalali's life as a bargaining chip to pervert Swedish justice and force the Swedish authorities to release Hamid Nouri,” Amnesty International stressed in a statement.
However, Sweden did not warn its citizens until it was too late, when a man working for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Johan Floders, decided to visit Iran for personal reasons and was arrested by the notorious spy organization, the Revolutionary Guard.
