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Iranwire – On March 10, Swedish deputy chief prosecutor Hans Ihrman confirmed that two Iranians suspected of plotting acts of terror, who had entered the country using fake identities, had been returned to Iran. The US had wanted the pair extradited, but the request did not arrive in time.
The release was unexpected, and may have come about in part because of a desire by Stockholm to thaw relations with Tehran after a string of high-level prosecutions. Hamid Nouri is still on trial, two Swedish-Iranian brothers, Peyman and Payam Kia, are in custody over alleged espionage. Meanwhile Ahmad Reza Jalali, an Iranian-Swedish physician and scientist, remains on the death row Iran, and his captors have made his fate dependent on the release of Asadollah Asadi. At the same time, however, lawyers were also missing the final, decisive pieces of evidence to prosecute the pair.
Who Were “Salma and Fouad”?
The two suspects entered Sweden in 2015 as refugees during a well-documented wave of migration from the Middle East to Europe. They applied for asylum under the names of Salma Khormaee and Fouad Malekshahi, claiming to be Afghan nationals.
The pair resided in Sweden for six years. Then in April 2021, they were arrested and charged with “planning to commit terrorist acts” in Sweden. Police then discovered they had lied about every aspect of their identity.
“Salma” was Fereshteh Sanai-Farid, born on June 8, 1982, rather than June 1993 in Kapisa as she’d said. “Fouad” was Mehdi Ramezani, born in Iran in November 4, 1982: nine years before the date on his identity card. On arrival in Sweden, the pair had asked for an Iranian interpreter because, having lived for many years in Iran, they could no longer understand certain words in Dari. “Salma” was also unable to spell the name of her birthplace in Latin characters.
The deception worked, though. And shortly before their first residency permits expired in 2020, the pair requested a three-year extension, which was duly renewed without question. It was not until last year that SÄPO – and separately, this writer – ascertained who they really were.
Little is known about the lives of Fereshteh Sanai-Farid and Mehdi Ramezani before they came to Sweden. They do, however, co-direct a business based on Resalat Avenue in Tehran, called the Farsima Mehr-Gostar Industrial Company. Registered in 2010, its stated activities include import-exports and organizing events.
Swedish security services have alleged the couple knew about their mission from the moment that they set foot on the Swedish soil. In the intervening years they kept a low profile, were not active online and lived a very isolated life, even covering up their windows to avoid prying eyes. As they were Muslim and relatively new to the country, neighbours thought nothing of it.
A Tangle of Interests
According to Swedish officials, the US had wanted to put Sanai-Farid and Ramezani on trial but “deportation became the best option” when the request was delayed. The details of the alleged plot have not been shared publicly, but the extradition request suggests it may have been in some way aimed at Americans or Iranian-Americans. The couple, Swedish officials said, were being deported in order to “neutralize the threat” to the lives of their intended targets.
Stockholm-Tehran relations aside, Prosecutor Ihrman has also indicated there may not have been enough evidence to support the case against them. “The investigation stopped when I didn’t get the final, decisive proof I’d have needed,” he has said. “The material I had on my desk was not enough to prosecute.” As a result, he did not renew the order to keep the pair in custody past December 14 of last year.
Due to an intervention by the Swedish security police (which answers only to the Prime Minister and not the judiciary), however, Sanai-Farid and Ramezani were not then released but kept at an immigration detention center. They remained there from mid-December until their deportation last week.
The Swedish government and others have recently come under renewed pressure from the Islamic Republic of late to amend judicial decisions taken in the country, which of course cannot be done as unlike in Iran, their judiciaries are independent. At a meeting with his Swedish counterpart in February, Iranian foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian once again brought up the trial of Hamid Nouri. Unlike Nouri, the allegations against “Salma and Fouad” will now likely never be tested in an open court, and the particulars of the case against them will remain unknown.
