The Iranian authorities executed a Swedish man on Wednesday morning after he was convicted of espionage for Israel. His death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court, Iran International has reported.
The man has been identified as Kourosh Keyvani, and has been accused of passing "images and information of sensitive locations" to officers of Israel's Mossad Intelligence Agency, the newspaper has reported.
As per the Iranian media, Keyvani was arrested in Savojbolagh in June last year while Israel was carrying out strikes on the nuclear sites of Iran. While Iranian authorities have maintained that the case went through legal procedures, none of the independent evidence supporting the allegations against Keyvani was made public.
Following his execution, Sweden's foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, confirmed the execution and expressed dismay over the incident. "It is with dismay that I have received information that a Swedish citizen was executed in Iran earlier today," she said in a statement. "The death penalty is an inhumane, cruel and irreversible punishment. Sweden, together with the rest of the EU, condemns its application in all circumstances."
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Stenergard said that the Iranian ambassador in Stockholm had been summoned to condemn the decision. She added that the legal proceedings leading up to the execution did not meet the standards of due process.
She said that Sweden had repeatedly raised the case at various levels with the Iranian representatives since the man's arrest in June last year. Tasnim News Agency of Iran said that the man was recruited online by Israeli intelligence while in Sweden after he posted his details on a group travel advertising link.
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