Death Sentence Upheld By Iran

Iran’s supreme court has upheld the death sentence handed down to a Swedish Iranian dual national convicted of leading an Arab separatist group accused of attacks including one on a military parade in 2018 that killed 25 people, state media reported on Sunday.

Iran said in 2020 that its security forces arrested Sweden-based Habib Farajollah Chaab in Turkey and took him to Tehran, without saying where or how he was captured.

In 2022, Iran started trial of Chaab on charges of leading the separatist Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, which seeks a separate state in the oil-rich Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran, and plotting and carrying out numerous bombings and terrorist operations. He was sentenced to death for being corrupt on earth, a capital offence under Iran’s strict form of Islamic law, Iranian state media said.

The confirmation of Chaab’s death sentence comes amid soured relations between Iran and Sweden over a Swedish courts life time in prison sentence for a former Iranian official for involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 in the Islamic Republic.