Brussels 10.12.2023 The trial against Swedish national and EU employee Johan Floderus started on December 9, Saturday. Floderus, a 33-year-old Swedish citizen and EU diplomat, has been held captive in Iran Tehran’s Evin prison, for the past 18 months, prompting his family to draw attention to the severe conditions he faces.

“As EU, we have been very clear from the beginning: Mr. Floderus is innocent. There are absolutely no grounds for keeping Johan Floderus in detention” reads the statement by High Representative Josep Borrell on the ongoing trial.

“The EU continues to call for Johan Floderus to be freed immediately.

“As High Representative, I persistently raise the case at every occasion and contact with the Iranian authorities, since his detention, requesting his liberation.

“We are seeking clarification and more information from them, in closest coordination with the Swedish authorities who bear the consular responsibility.

“The European Union will continue to work tirelessly to secure the release of our colleague Johan and that of other EU nationals like him, who are arbitrarily detained in Iran” the EU top diplomat concluded.

With no routine consular visits or phone calls during his 600 days of detention in Tehran’s Evin prison, Johan has resorted to hunger strikes at least five times, as revealed by his father, Matts Floderus.

The father detailed the dire circumstances Johan is enduring in an interview with the mass media. According to his information, Johan is confined to a cell without a bed and compelled to sleep under constant lighting. Routine access to phone calls, books, and essential food supplements has been consistently denied.

Expressing the family’s distress, Matts Floderus shared his wife’s hope for Johan’s release in time for Christmas, highlighting the devastating impact of the situation on his son. He emphasized Johan’s arbitrary detention, stating that he has committed no wrongdoing and should be released unconditionally to leave the country.

However Iran routinely arrests foreigners and dual citizens to use them as bargaining chips against Western countries. The United States released $6 billion of Iran’s blocked funds this year to free five hostages.

Johan, an alumnus of Oxford, previously worked on the Afghanistan desk of the EU’s external services department. He was detained on April 17, 2022, in what seems to be a deliberate strategy by Iranian authorities, possibly aimed at exchanging his release against Iranian prisoners in the West or extracting financial concessions.