Iran executes Swedish-Iranian dual national: State media

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Habib Farajollah Chaab was sentenced to death for his role in a separatist group alleged to have carried out a deadly attack.

Iran has executed a Swedish-Iranian dissident convicted of leading an Arab separatist group accused of attacks, including one on a military parade in 2018 that killed 25 people, state media reported.

Habib Farajollah Chaab was sentenced to death for being “corrupt on earth,” a capital offense under Iran’s strict Islamic laws, the Reuters news agency reported.

State broadcaster IRIB reported on his execution on Saturday.

“The death sentence for Habib Chaab… nicknamed Habib Asyud, the head of the Harakat al-Nidal terror group… was carried out today, Saturday morning,” the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

In March, Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of the Iranian-Swedish dissident for alleged “terrorist” activities linked to the Arab separatist group known as the Arab Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, which is seeking a separate state in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan. in southwestern Iran. He was found guilty of plotting and carrying out “numerous bombings and terrorist operations”.

Iran has strained relations with its ethnic minorities, including Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Baluch, accusing them of aligning themselves with neighboring countries.

Arabs and other minorities have long complained of discrimination in Iran, an accusation Tehran denies.

Iran said in 2020 that its security forces had arrested Sweden-based Chaab in Turkey and taken him to Tehran, without saying where or how he was captured.

Sweden had expressed concern over Chaab’s case.

Ties with Iran have also been soured by a Swedish court’s life sentence for a former Iranian official for involvement in the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners in the Islamic Republic.