Swedish diplomat Harald Edelstam’s civic courage during the 1973 military coup in Chile points the way for the international community to get about arbitrary detention and hostage

The Swede must go!

When, in September 1973, members of the Chilean military launched a coup against President Salvador Allende, Swedish Ambassador Harald Edelstam did not hesitate. Over the next three months, he provided aid to hundreds of frightened people – irrespective of gender, race, or creed – deftly negotiating with government officials, sidestepping and often bending the rules in the process. He opened his home and the premises of the Swedish Embassy to those fleeing persecution, pushing his fellow diplomatic colleagues to do the same. Ignoring growing concerns for his own safety, Edelstam forced the new military leaders to respect the norms of diplomatic protection and immunity. He had done so successfully once before, thirty years earlier, when his tireless efforts to protect Norway’s Jews and Norwegian resistance fighters  earned him the nickname “The Black Pimpernel”, (due to his ability to remain virtually invisible).

By late November, the junta finally had enough. The government newspaper La Segunda published the menacing headline “How Long Must We Tolerate Ambassador Edelstam?”. On December 4, the government declared Edelstam persona non grata. “The Swede Must Go”, shouted another headline.

The Responsibility to Protect

Edelstam’s courageous activism became a symbol of what is recognized in international humanitarian law as “The Responsibility to Protect”. Fifty years on, his legacy remains more important than ever – a lasting reminder that moral courage in the face of repression is one of the highest expressions of public service.

Just as important is the realization that the responsibility to act rests with all of us. To paraphrase the legendary former German Attorney General Fritz Bauer (who in the early 1960s played a decisive role in the capture of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann), “Democracy is a boat in which we must all row.”¹

With arbitrary detention and hostage diplomacy steadily on the rise, affecting thousands of people and their families, it is crucial for the international community to create a bolder, much better coordinated approach to meet the challenge.

Among state actors and their affiliated groups, the Islamic Republic of Iran remains one of the greatest threats. More than 20 EU citizens are known to be imprisoned in the country. At least two and possibly as many as eight US citizens are currently held prisoners. The actual figures are presumed to be evenhigher.

Among the detained foreigners are Shahab Dalili, a US legal permanent resident from the Commonwealth of Virgina, arrested in 2016 after attending his father’s funeral; Iranian born Swedish citizen, Ahmadreza Djalali, a prominent physician and medical scholar, sentenced to death on spurious charges of espionage in 2017; three French citizens, including 18-year-old Lennart Monterlos, as well as Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who have been detained for more than three years now; as well as two British citizens Craig and Lindsay Foreman arrested in January  2025 while transiting through Iran on a motorcycle trip.

So far, Western countries have struggled to find an effective response.

“From Iran’s hostage crisis in 1979 to the repeated use of hostage diplomacy by regimes such as North Korea, Cuba, or the Mullahs in Tehran, as well as non-state actors such as Hamas and those who help fund them, we see a consistent failure to establish a coherent, effective strategy,” says Jason Poblete, an international lawyer with a long expertise on hostage issues and human rights law. “It’s a failure of the rule of law itself,” Poblete adds. He emphasizes the need for a clear-eyed strategy. “Until we take a unified and principled stand, the hostage playbook will continue to be used, adapted, and refined by state and non-state actors that see it as a proven tactic to extract political concessions.”

Recent actions by the regime in Tehran seem to bear out Poblete’s warning. Rather than feeling intimidated or fearing serious repercussions, the Islamic Republic seems emboldened. Since concluding a ceasefire deal with Israel and the ill-conceived attack on Tehran’s Evin Prison by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), authorities have detained well over 800 people were arrested for alleged links to Israel, in a massive crackdown on internal dissent. Regime opponents warn of planned mass executions.

In its search for a meaningful response the international community could draw much needed inspiration from the creative, often daring, but always decisive approaches taken by Harald Edelstam and other courageous human rights defenders around the world. “I have known a few American Edelstams,” Poblete says, “but they need support and clarity of purpose from our political leaders.”

In the US, a new research study released by the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation earlier this year urges the US government “to get ahead of the threat” by pursuing a much more “proactive” and comprehensive approach, with an enhanced focus on deterrence and “more robust use” of all means available for holding perpetrators accountable. As a starting point in the EU, Hostage Aid Worldwide has called for convening a European Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Hostage Policy, outlined in detail in its 2024 Annual Global Hostage Report. 

Underscoring the sense of urgency, this past March the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Dr. Alice Jill Edwards issued astark warning in her report to the Human Rights Council, stressing the need for the international community to criminalize all forms of hostage taking as a crime against humanity. “The time to act is now,” Edwards writes.

Dual nationals at heightened risk

Dual nationals like Shahab Dalili and Ahmadreza Djalali find themselves at especially high risk, since the Islamic Republicrefuses to recognize their foreign citizenship or provide basic consular access.

In June 2024, Dr. Djalali was left out of a prisoner exchange that freed Swedish EU diplomat Johan Floderus and Swedish businessman Saeed Azizi in an exchange for Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian government official sentenced to life imprisonment  in Sweden in 2022 for the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the late 1980s.

Dual nationals like Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali (left) and Shahab Dalili are a heightened risk. Both men
have been left repeatedly behind in several prisoner exchanges with the Islamic Republic.

The exchange drew sharp criticism for freeing a mass murderer who had been duly convicted in formal judicial proceedings. Critics also pointed to the fact that Sweden did not manage to force greater concessions from the Islamic Republic for a man of Nouri’s importance. According to former US hostage Siamak Namazi who was released in September 2023, after eight years of imprisonment, Nouri’s value to Iran cannot be overstated.

“Sweden says Tehran refused to recognize Ahmadreza as a Swedish citizen, Namazi wrote in a public commentary in June 2024, “but I believe it could have secured the release of all its nationals and several other European hostages, too, had it understood the value of the card it was holding.”

So far, the EU and Sweden have also not been successful in securing the release of other long-term arbitrarily detained citizen. The Swedish journalist Dawit Isaak has been imprisoned in Eritrea without charge or trial for 23 years. He has not been allowed any contact with Swedish officials, family members or legal counsel. His current whereabouts and physical condition are unknown. In 2015, Swedish publisher Gui Minhaidisappeared from his vacation home in Thailand. He resurfaced in China and in 2020 he was sentenced to ten years in prison in a secret trial. His family has not had any sign of life from him since 2018.

Lack of consistency in the official handling of hostage cases remains a serious problem. Just like Gui Minhai, German citizenJamshid “Jimmy” Sharmahd, a US based software engineer, became the victim of a transnational kidnapping. In 2020, he was abducted by Iranian intelligence officers during a stop-over in Dubai. In September 2023, Sharmahd – along with Shahab Dalili – was left out of another controversial prisoner deal with the Islamic Republic that freed five U.S. hostages, in exchange for the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The German government never vigorously advocated on Sharmahd’s behalf.In October 2024, the Islamic Republic announced his execution, only to state later that he had died of natural causes while being held in strict isolation, without any access to proper medical care. Iranian authorities have still not provided a full account of his death. His mutilated body was returned to his family in February 2025. So far, nobody has been held responsible for his murder.

Criminalize all forms of hostage taking

The UN Rapporteur on Torture has repeatedly urged the international community to act far more decisively to hold perpetrators accountable and provide more meaningful support to victims and their families.

In her report, Dr. Edwards recommends criminalizing all forms of hostage diplomacy as well as recognizing it as an official act of torture and an offence warranting punishment as a crime against humanity. “We cannot allow hostage-taking to become an accepted tool of diplomacy or warfare,” Edwards insists.

The report recommends countries to seek the full implementation/ratification of the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages which was adopted in 1979.

“Hostage-taking is a cruel game – plain and simple,” Edwardsnotes. “It inflicts severe physical and psychological suffering on both hostages and their families.” Citing the continuing Israeli hostage crisis in Gaza, the report places special emphasis on the rights of family members to learn the truth about their loved one’s fate. Approximately 50 of the 251 Israeli citizen taken hostage in the  October 7, 2023 attacks remain unaccounted for, with 20 hostages believed to be still alive.

Edwards emphasizes that victim-focused support is essential to ensure that prisoners and their families receive long-term psychological, medical and financial assistance. “They should be legally recognized as survivors of torture,” her report adds.

American citizen Mark Swidan, who was released last year after being imprisoned in China for 12 years, recently revealed that he is relying on food stamps to cover daily expenses, while also caring for his ailing 75–year–old mother.

Emphasis on collective action and deterrence

In 2021, Canada launched the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State relations. 80 countries have endorsed the document, but its impact has remained limited because it so far remains non-binding. The EU should quickly work towards a binding mechanism, triggering an automatic mutual (“Article 5”) assistance response whenever a hostage taking occurs. Because what use are international declarations and conventions when they are not being applied or enforced?

In 2018, the G7 introduced a Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) to counter the growing threat of transnational repression and there are growing calls to expand this mechanism to include acts of international hostage taking.

At a recent meeting arranged by the office of the US Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, officials from Australia, the UK, Canada, Austria, Germany and Israel discussed the need for collective action and improved information sharing regarding specific cases. “We will spare no effort, in accordance with international law, to bring home hostages and unjustly or arbitrarily detained individuals and to deter such future acts”, the group declared in a joint statement.

The EU’s 27 member countries are still struggling to function as a coherent entity when it comes to countering hostage diplomacy. EU policies like highlighting torture-free trade are well meaning but have not been fully implemented and lack credibility when countries like Germany actually have accelerated trade with autocratic regimes in recent years, including the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Emphasizing the need for  governments to think and act more creatively, Siamak Namazi and 21 former hostages imprisoned by the Islamic Republic urged Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson this past May to seek resumption of deliveries of special medical dressings, produced by the Swedish company Mölnlycke, that are urgently required by hundreds of Iranian citizens, mostly children, who suffer from epidermolysis bulliosa (EB), a painful skin conditions. Deliveries were suspended in 2018, due to US sanctions. Such a humanitarian gesture, along with other measures, could create favorable conditions to secure the release of multiple foreign hostages.

Compression bandages help soothe this young patient’s abraded skin and prevent further damage.

Earlier this year, the EU Parliament issued a forceful statement condemning hostage taking by the Islamic Republic, but more concrete action is required. When asked in 2024, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service (EEAS) Peter Stano indicated that the EU had no plans for creating a more coordinated approach among member states to confront hostage diplomacy. Instead, he stressed that individual members states would have to initiate such policy steps.

Europe and the rest of the international community know they must do better. It is time to set the bar higher and to acknowledge not only in words but deeds that a resolute defense of their citizens is not merely a task but a fundamental duty.
Iranian officials are seeking far-reaching concessions from the U.S. government and the EU as part of a new agreement about its nuclear program, including sanctions relief and the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds. Western governments must leave no doubt that they will vigorously protect both their citizens and their interests, and that any future deal will require the Islamic Republic to free all hostages, comply with international human rights law and end its practice of hostage diplomacy once and for all.

¹ “Demokratie ist kein Dampfer, dessen Kapitän man sich anvertraut, sondern ein Boot, in dem wir alle mitrudern müssen.”

By:
Susanne Berger: Senior Fellow with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR)

Caroline Edelstam: Co-Founder and President of the Edelstam Foundation. 

For further reading:

Harald Edelstam  HE Background | The Edelstam Foundation

Mats Fors. Svarta nejlikan: Harald Edelstam – En Berättelse om Mod, Humanitet och Passion [The Black Pimpernel: Harald Edelstam – A Story of Courage, Jumanity and Passion] (in Swedish). Stockholm: Prisma, 2009.

Germán Perotti and Jan Sandquist. Harald Edelstam: Héroe del Humanismo, Defensor de la Vida [Harald Edelstam: Hero of Humanism, Defender of Life] (in Spanish). Santiago: LOM, 2013

Jason Poblete. The G7’s Deafening Silence on Ending Hostage Diplomacy. July 1, 2025.

Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver. Taking Collective Action to End Hostage-Taking. Policy Magazine. October 22, 2024

Susanne Berger. Deficiencies in Human Rights Advocacy Mechanisms. Four case studies: Raoul Wallenberg, Dawit Isaak, Gui Minhai, Ahmadreza Djalali. Seminar presentation, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (Canada Program) at Harvard University, November 19, 2024.