Iran executed on Saturday Swedish-Iranian dissident Habib Chaab for “terrorism”, drawing prompt condemnation from Sweden, in the Islamic republic’s latest use of the death penalty against dual nationals.
Chaab had been held in Iran since October 2020 after he vanished during a visit to Turkey before going on trial in Tehran, which does not recognise dual nationality.
Convicted of “corruption on earth” for heading a rebel group, he was condemned to death on Decem-ber 6 — a decision denounced by Sweden — and Iran’s supreme court upheld the sentence in March.
“The death sentence for Habib Chaab… nick-named Habib Asyud, the head of the Harakat al-Nidal terrorist group… was carried out today, Satur-day morning,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom, whose country currently holds the European Union presidency, denounced the execution as “inhuman”.
Harakat al-Nidal, or Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, is considered by Iran as a “terrorist group” and blamed for orchestrating at-tacks in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
The oil-rich province is home to a large Arab minority, and its people have long complained of marginalisation.
Iranian authorities accused Chaab of staging at-tacks since 2005 “under the protection of… the Mos-sad and Sapo” — the Israeli and Swedish spy agencies, respectively.
In December 2020, the Turkish authorities an-nounced the arrest of 11 people suspected of having kidnapped Chaab in Istanbul before taking him to Van, a city near Turkey’s eastern border with Iran, and handing him over to the authorities in Tehran.
Iranian prosecutors allege other leaders of Hara-kat al-Nidal are based in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, with the group receiving financial and logistical support from Saudi Arabia.
Iranian state television had aired a video of Chaab in which he claimed responsibility for a 2018 attack on a military parade in Ahvaz, the Khuzestan provin-cial capital, that authorities said killed 25 people and wounded almost 250.
In the footage, Chaab admitted to working with Saudi intelligence services. Such confessions are frequently condemned by rights groups based outside of Iran as “forced”, arguing they are often obtained under duress.
“The death penalty is an inhuman and irreversible punishment and Sweden, together with the rest of the EU, condemns its application in all circumstances,” Billstrom wrote on Twitter.—AFP
