COPENHAGEN: The Swedish European Union diplomat who was held in Iran for two years and freed in a prisoner swap over the weekend said Tuesday that his release was “the dream that I sometimes did not dare to believe in.”
Johan Floderus and a second Swedish citizen, Saeed Azizi, returned to Sweden on Saturday in exchange for Hamid Nouri, an Iranian convicted in Stockholm of committing war crimes over his part in 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic.
Floderus was arrested in April 2022 at the Tehran airport while returning from a vacation with friends. He had been held for months before his family and others went public with his detention.
“After two long years, I am finally a free man, reunited with my family, my fiance, and will be able to marry,” he said in a statement to Swedish media. “The dream that I sometimes did not dare to believe in has come true — to be back with my loved ones and to live my life in freedom.”
Sweden’s Expressen tabloid posted a video of Floderus on his knee at the airport on Saturday and appearing to be proposing to his fiance. In the background stood Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who had welcomed Floderus and Azizi at the airport and said they had faced a “hell on earth.”
The swap was mediated by Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula that has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West. It came as the Muslim world celebrates Eid Al-Adha, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage and typically sees prisoners freed.
The arrest of Nouri by Sweden in 2019 as he traveled there as a tourist likely sparked the detentions of the two Swedes, part of a long-running strategy by Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution to use those with ties abroad as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West. Iran long has contended it doesn’t hold prisoners to use in negotiations, despite years of multiple swaps with the US and other nations showing otherwise.
In 2022, the Stockholm District Court sentenced Nouri to life in prison. It identified him as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison outside the Iranian city of Karaj.
Saturday’s swap did not include Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian expert on disaster medicine whom a UN panel long has described as being arbitrarily detained by Tehran since 2016. He is currently being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison.
In an appeal to Kristersson, Swedish broadcaster SVT on Tuesday carried an audio message from Djalali, who faces possible execution after being convicted on charges of “corruption on Earth” in 2017.
“Mister prime minister, you decided to leave me behind under huge risk of being executed,” Djalali said in the message. “You left me here helpless. Why not me? After 3,000 days.”
A Swedish diplomat says his release from a 2-year detention in Iran is like a dream
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A Swedish diplomat says his release from a 2-year detention in Iran is like a dream
- “The dream that I sometimes did not dare to believe in has come true — to be back with my loved ones and to live my life in freedom,” said Floderus
- Sweden’s Expressen tabloid posted a video of Floderus on his knee at the airport on Saturday and appearing to be proposing to his fiancé
UN Security Council condemns attack in Russia’s Dagestan
- Russia’s southern region of Dagestan ended three days of mourning Wednesday following an attack by militants who authorities say killed 21 people, mostly police
MOSCOW: The United Nations Security Council condemned the deadly attack that targeted churches and synagogues on Sunday in the predominantly Muslim region of Dagestan in Russia, according to a statement on Wednesday.
“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the heinous and cowardly terrorist,” the statement said.
Russia’s southern region of Dagestan ended three days of mourning Wednesday following an attack by militants who authorities say killed 21 people, mostly police, and attacked Christian and Jewish houses of worship in assaults in two cities.
Sunday’s violence in Dagestan’s regional capital of Makhachkala and nearby Derbent was the latest that officials blamed on extremists in the predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus. It was also the deadliest in Russia since March, when gunmen opened fire at a concert in suburban Moscow, killing 145 people.
Cable car collapse in Colombia leaves at least 1 dead and 12 injured, officials say
- It was not immediately clear if the person who died was a passenger in the gondola-style car
MEDELLIN, Colombia: A cable car in the Colombian city of Medellin failed and plunged onto a sidewalk next to a station platform Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring 12 others, officials said.
It was not immediately clear if the person who died was a passenger in the gondola-style car, which was part of the city’s public transportation system. Ten people were in the car when it fell, Medellín Mayor Federico Gutiérrez said on the social media platform X.
Medellin’s Metrocable runs six lines aimed at serving some of the city’s low-income neighborhoods that are informally built on steep hills.
One of the cable cars hit another cabin during a descending ride and then failed as it approached a station in the city’s northeastern area, Metrocable manager Tomás Elejalde told reporters.
Officials said the accident is under investigation. A cause was not immediately determined.
Indian soldiers kill three suspected Kashmir militants
- Exchange of fire occurs in remote Doda area during search operation, says police
- Latest clash takes place days before a major Hindu festival is to take place
SRINAGAR, India: Three suspected militants were killed Wednesday in Indian-administered Kashmir during a daylong firefight with soldiers, police said, the latest incident in an uptick of attacks in the disputed territory.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947.
Indian police said the exchange of fire in the remote Doda area came after security forces launched a search operation based on intelligence about the presence of militants.
Three “terrorists” were killed during the ensuing firefight, police said in a post on social media platform X.
“Arms and ammunition have been recovered from their possession,” the post said.
The latest clash in the forested area, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar, came days before a major Hindu pilgrimage is set to begin.
Two suspected militants were killed in a residential area of northern Kashmir valley last week.
India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir in full and have fought three wars for control of the Himalayan region.
Rebel groups have waged an insurgency since 1989, demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels.
Nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens wounded this month when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in the southern Reasi area.
It was one of the deadliest attacks in years and the first on Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir since 2017, when gunmen killed seven people in another ambush on a bus.
Germany moves to ease the deportation of foreigners who glorify terrorist acts
- Under the law, a single comment on social media could provide grounds for kicking people out
- The Interior Ministry said that the law on residence will be changed so that approving or promoting “a single terrorist crime” is grounds for a “particularly serious interest in expulsion”
BERLIN: Germany’s government on Wednesday launched new legislation to ease the deportation of foreigners who publicly approve of terrorist acts.
Under the law, a single comment on social media could provide grounds for kicking people out.
The measure approved by the Cabinet was pledged by Chancellor Olaf Scholz following a knife attack last month on members of a group that describes itself as opposing “political Islam,” an assault that left a police officer dead. It comes as Scholz’s government faces broader pressure to curb migration.
The Interior Ministry said that the law on residence will be changed so that approving or promoting “a single terrorist crime” is grounds for a “particularly serious interest in expulsion.” That means that in future a single comment that “glorifies and endorses a terrorist crime on social media” could constitute a reason for expulsion.
Anyone who publicly approves of an offense “in a manner which is suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace” could also be expelled, and a conviction would not be required. Liking a social media post would not be sufficient grounds for deportation, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.
Faeser said that Hamas’ acts during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel have been “celebrated in a repugnant way” on social media in Germany, and the attack in Mannheim “also was glorified on the net by many in the most appalling way.”
“Such brutalization online stokes a climate of violence that can drive extremists to new acts of violence,” Faeser added. “So it’s very clear to me that Islamist agitators who mentally live in the Stone Age have no place in our country. Anyone who has no German passport and glorifies terrorist acts here must, wherever possible, be expelled and deported.”
She said she was confident that lawmakers will approve the change soon, and that she didn’t see it falling foul of freedom of speech laws.
The government faces ongoing pressure to reduce the number of migrants coming to and staying in Germany. Earlier this year, lawmakers approved legislation that is intended to ease deportations of unsuccessful asylum-seekers.
At the same time, Scholz’s socially liberal administration is easing the rules on gaining citizenship and ending restrictions on holding dual citizenship. It says the plan will bolster the integration of immigrants and help attract skilled workers, while opposition conservatives have argued that it cheapens German citizenship.
Faeser defended the new naturalization law, which takes effect on Thursday.
The legislation stipulates that people being naturalized must be able to support themselves and their relatives. The existing law requires that would-be citizens be committed to the “free democratic fundamental order,” and the new version specifies that antisemitic and racist acts are incompatible with that.
The government has said that issues such as antisemitism, Israel’s right to exist and Jewish life in Germany are being given a greater weight in the citizenship test applicants have to undergo.
Faeser said that, by that measure, “we have made obtaining German citizenship more difficult.”
Greek police arrest suspected crime boss sought by Russia
- Europol says the “vory v zakone” (thieves in law) network is a tightly-structured type of criminal organization
- Greek police arrested the 51-year old Georgian at a restaurant in central Athens
ATHENS: Greece has arrested a suspected crime boss with the underworld title of “vor v zakone” — or thief in law — wanted by Russia under an Interpol red notice, police officials said on Wednesday.
Europe has stepped up its fight against Russian-speaking organized crime groups since the assassination of a clan leader in 2013 in Moscow triggered a power struggle among the crime network.
Europol, the EU-wide police liaison agency, says the “vory v zakone” (thieves in law) network is a tightly-structured type of criminal organization originating in the underworld of the Soviet Union, which fell apart in 1991.
Greek police arrested the 51-year old Georgian, whose name has not been released, on Tuesday after receiving a tipoff that he was planning to travel to Athens. A red notice had been issued by Interpol against him at the request of Russia.
He was arrested at a restaurant in central Athens where he had been attending a dinner with 13 other men, among them a 58-year old man who was later also arrested for gun possession.
A third man was arrested for lacking a residence permit and refusing to undergo an identity check.
The other men at the dinner were briefly detained and then freed.
