A Swedish national employed by the European Union faces charges in Iran of spying for Israel and ‘corruption on earth’, a capital offense under the country’s Islamic laws, Iranian news agency ISNA said on Sunday. 

Johan Floderus was detained in April 2022 while on holiday in Iran. Sweden’s foreign minister said on Saturday that his trial had begun. 

Floderus’ family has said he was detained “without any justifiable cause or due process.” 

Rights groups and Western governments have accused the Islamic Republic of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges that may have been trumped up. Tehran says such arrests are based on its criminal code and it denies holding people for political reasons. 

Relations between Sweden and Iran have been tense since 2019 when Sweden arrested a former Iranian official for his part in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s.  
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