Iranian-Swedish dissident executed, EU condemns ‘inhuman punishment’

Iran executed, Saturday, May 6, the Iranian-Swedish dissident Habib Chaab, sentenced to death on December 6 for “terrorism”, announced the Iranian justice. The latter accused him of being the leader of an Arab separatist group in the west of the country.

Executions are usually carried out in Iran by hanging. The justice had confirmed his death sentence on March 12 “for corruption on Earth, the management and direction of a rebel group and the planning and execution of numerous terrorist operations”.

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Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, condemned the execution. “The death penalty is an inhuman and irreversible punishment and Sweden, like the rest of the EU, condemns its application in all circumstances”Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said on Twitter.

Aged about fifty years old according to Iranian media, Habib Chaab, also known as Habib Asyud, is presented as the leader of the group Harakat al-Nidal, or ASMLA (Arab Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz), considered as a terrorist movement by the Iranian authorities. He had disappeared in October 2020 after going to Istanbul, before reappearing a month later in prison in Iran.

In November 2020, Iranian television broadcast a video of Habib Chaab, in which he accused himself in particular of a murderous attack which targeted a military parade in September 2018 in Ahvaz, capital of the province of Khuzestan (south-west ), and to work for the Saudi intelligence services.