CHRI – Ahmadreza Djajali, an Iranian-born Swedish resident who was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran in October 2017 for alleged espionage charges, wrote in a letter from Evin Prison that he was imprisoned during a trip to Iran for refusing to spy for Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. The date of the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), is unknown. The relevant passages by Djalali, an expert in emergency and disaster medicine, have been produced unedited below along with the full letter. Djalali will be appealing his sentence within the 20-day deadline, a source close to the Djalali family told CHRI.
The second event happened in autumn, 2015. I was invited by the national passive defense organization (affiliated to the military system of Iran) to give a speech about health system resiliency against CBRNE terrorist attacks. Furthermore, I attended in couple of meetings about a training program relevant to passive defense and counter-terrorism, and unclassified and public project. Almost 6 months after these meetings, during my academic trip to Tehran, I was suddenly detained by the intelligence ministry, and was accused of acting against national security. They told me “you have gathered series of top secret and secret data about Iran’s critical infrastructures, crisis management and passive dense systems and projects, and then have transferred them to Israel. They accused me of being the spy of Israel since 2008 and told me “all your PhD studying and post-doc fellow processes, and also the visa and residency (temporary and permanent) issues in EU (Sweden and Italy) have been arranged and offered by Israel in lieu of (in exchange for) your spying services for them”. I rejected the accusation and their blames, and emphasized that all processes as well as the residency have been legally conducted by the universities. I have never had relationships and cooperation with any Intelligence services, not from Israel or any other country. I have never travelled to Israel, also had no colleague or friends from Israel.”
Download a PDF file of Djalali’s entire letter.