March 25, 2022
Sweden has deported back to Iran two alleged Iranian agents who were arrested for links to a terrorist plot, after deciding not to put the pair on trial.
According to documents seen by Iran International, the real identities of the two suspects were Fereshteh Sanai-Fari (female) and Mehdi Ramezani (male), who had entered Sweden under the names of Salma Khormai and Javad Malekshahi, respectively.
The two, who entered Sweden in 2015 as refugees during the great refugee flood to Europe, without any documents, had claimed they were from Afghanistan.
Sweden’s security agencies arrested the pair in April 2021, but never revealed details of their offenses. The only crime publicly known is their false claims during their refugee hearings and alleged “conspiracy to commit a criminal terrorist act.”
According to a report by IranWire, Sweden’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor Hans Ihrman said March 10 that the two have been repatriated to Iran because the prosecutor’s office hadn’t received the required charging documents from the security agencies.
The United States also wanted the suspects but, according to Ihrman, the formal request to extradite had not arrived in time before their deportation.
The Swedish Security Service said the pair had traveled to Europe as a terrorism sleeper cell and were planning to execute a terrorist act against Iranian dissidents, apparently American citizens.
Finland-based journalist Kambiz Ghafouri told Iran International Sweden probably deported the couple because Sweden already has cases underway against Iranians Hamid Nouri and the Kia brothers for links with the Islamic Republic and probably didn’t want more tensions with Tehran.
Sweden is entangled in another Iran-related case. Ghafouri said the Islamic Republic has tied the fate of Iranian-Swedish doctor Ahmadreza Djalali—who was arrested in 2016 by Iranian intelligence on vague charges of spying and sentenced to death October 21, 2017—to the extradition of Iranian diplomat Asadollah Asadi—who was arrested in 2018 for the attempted bombing of a rally of the Mojahedin-e Khalq near Paris.
There is also the case of Stephen Kevin Gilbert and Simon Kasper Brown, two Swedish nationals charged with drug trafficking in Iran that the Islamic Republic wants to use in a prisoner swap to get Nouri, Iran International said.
Nouri was arrested in November 2019 while visiting Sweden and charged with war crimes for his role in the execution of up to 5,000 political prisoners in Iran serving jail time in 1988.
Peyman Kia, now 41 years old and a former head of the Swedish security police, and his brother Payam were arrested late in 2021 in Sweden and are facing espionage charges.