Canada – The Globe And Mail, June 03, 2025
Irwin Cotler is the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Canadian former minister of justice and attorney-general, and international legal counsel to Ahmadreza Djalali. Judith Abitan is the executive director of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and a fellow of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Scholars program.
On April 25, 2016, Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian disaster-medicine expert, was arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. Despite being invited by the University of Tehran, he was arbitrarily detained and subjected to months of interrogation in solitary confinement at Evin Prison’s Ward 209, and then sentenced to death for “corruption on earth” following a sham trial based on coerced confessions of espionage extracted under torture.
Iranian state media has relentlessly spread falsehoods, portraying Dr. Djalali as a threat to the state and enemy of the people. These slanders have been exploited against him while traumatizing his family in Sweden, exemplifying the intersection of domestic oppression and transnational repression.
Dr. Djalali’s wife and children – 13 and 4 when he was taken – have been forced to spend a significant part of their lives away from him. He continues to suffer from debilitating physical and mental health issues due to prolonged detention, denial of access to family, medical care and consular protection – conditions that amount to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
Dr. Djalali’s arbitrary detention not only violates Iran’s international humanitarian obligations under relevant treaties and conventions, it breaches Iran’s own civil, criminal, constitutional and Sharia laws. The Iranian Constitution guarantees fair trial rights, including the right to select legal representation, presumption of innocence and protection against unlawful detention – all of which have been violated in his case and in the cases of thousands of other documented detainees.
