A Swedish national employed by the EU is undergoing trial for supposedly “spying for Israel”. This crime carries the death penalty. Johan Floderus was indicited based on “corruption of Earth” and was arrested on April 17th, 2022 in a Tehran airport after returning from a trip with his friends. In a statement, Iran’s judiciary said that Floderus had been operating through projects by the United states and European institutions to gather intellegence and information for Israel. He has been in touch with many other suspects, European and non-European. Sweden is now being accused of proxy spying for Israel, which hides identities and can change an IP address. Floderus’ trial began on Sunday but it is yet to be said what he has been charged with. A spokesperson for Swedens foreign ministry is defeinding Floderus, claiming that he has been “arbitrarily detained and every accusation and charge is false, and we have clearly conveyed this to Iran many times”. Floderus’ family has also come out with statements defending him and trying to get him removed from detainment.
Knowing that Iran is very strict when it comes to commiting crimes and throws the death penalty around pretty lightly, I think Sweden made a wrong move by sending Floderus there rather than somewhere else to gather information. Iran is one of the strictest countries when it comes to certain behaviors, and Sweden should have been more careful when they decided to allow people to investigate therre. Regardless of if Floderus did commit the crime or not, if he is beung accused I think it will be hard for Sweden to talk their way into getting him out of detainment, or even worse, the death penalty. Iran is also involved with many terrorist groups which should have been enough to keep Sweden away.
This article specifically relates to the Anthony Bourdain documentary that we watched in class. When he traveled to Iran, he was very adement about explaining the many strict laws that come with living in Iran, mostly due to the strict Islamic population of the country which they have implanted into the government as well. Iran is also known as a national security threat which we also speak a lot about in class, they are in touch with terrorist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as continue to fund Hamas, which Sweden does not support and could potentially be the start of conflict between them.