For more than a year, Johan Floderus appeared in adverts to entice Swedes to apply for the bloc’s civil service. His jailing was kept a closely guarded secret.
A European Union official and poster boy of the diplomatic corp has been imprisoned in Iran for more than 500 days in the latest example of Tehran’s “hostage diplomacy” to extract concessions from the West.
He had previously visited there in an official capacity as part of his work for the EU without any problems before he joined the European External Action Service . The detention of Floderus stands out from previous cases as he is an established EU official in the diplomatic corp, who had a successful early career worthy of serving as a recruitment advertisement.Relations between Sweden and Iran have been tense since 2019 when Sweden arrested a former Iranian official for his part in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s.
In August, the US made a deal with Iran to free five Americans in exchange for $US6 billion in withheld Iranian oil revenues and the release of Iranian prisoners., a British-Iranian charity worker, was held in Iran for six years on false charges of espionage. She was eventually released in March 2022 after a long-standing disagreement over a British government debt was reached.This arrest in 2022 was a real escalation [...
A Belgian aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, was imprisoned in Tehran for 455 days on espionage charges. After his release, he referred to a Swedish fellow prisoner who became like a brother to him.