The sister of Johan Floderus, the 33-year-old Swedish EU diplomat who has been held captive in Iran's notorious Evin prison for more than 600 days, has said her brother is being used as a "pawn" in a "political game."
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00:00 The Swedish diplomat, Johan Floderus, has been in an Iranian prison for more than 650
00:06 days.
00:07 Floderus, who works for the EU`s diplomatic service and lives in Brussels, was detained
00:13 in Tehran`s airport after a touristic visit to the country.
00:16 The EU believes he is illegally detained and is a victim of growing arbitrary detentions
00:22 affecting EU citizens, also known as hostage diplomacy.
00:26 His family tried to raise awareness in an event in Brussels.
00:31 I can see from the pictures now from his trial that he looks very different from the brother
00:35 I know.
00:36 I see there is like not really this light in his eyes.
00:39 He looks much skinnier, very pale, of course, since he`s basically never going out.
00:44 And I know that he doesn`t get as much food as he needs, for example.
00:48 And not to mention the pain it must be like inside to stand there.
00:53 And like now he is accused for something where they want maybe to give him the death penalty.
01:00 So I mean -- and also the fact that he`s alone there.
01:03 We don`t even have a Swedish ambassador at the moment in Iran, so...
01:09 Floderus has spent 300 days in isolation and is kept hostage in a 24-hour light cell.
01:14 For the first 10 months, he could not contact his family.
01:17 After several hunger strikes, he has now very limited phone calls.
01:21 And in these almost two years, he only had two video calls.
01:24 He is forced to do them in English.
01:28 As you can hear, my English is not fluent because I`m a Swedish native speaker.
01:31 But we have to speak in English during those calls.
01:34 And otherwise they -- yeah, that`s a demand from the other side.
01:38 And also we know that he`s being supervised and they will break off the phone call if
01:42 something is said that they don`t want to.
01:44 So it`s hard for us to know what is really coming from my brother and what is maybe -- what
01:48 is maybe -- I wouldn`t say forced, but yeah, I don`t know.
01:53 Iran accused Floderus of what they call corruption on earth and believe he has spied for Israel.
01:58 The maximum sentence is death penalty.
02:02 He is an innocent man.
02:03 That is also the fact I want to really say that.
02:06 I don`t think that anyone really feels like my brother has done those crimes that he is
02:11 accused to.
02:13 So this is about some big political game where my brother is being used as a pawn.
02:18 And that is really for me something I cannot accept.
02:21 And I don`t think we as a nation or the European Union either should accept that.
02:27 His trial started in December and finished last Sunday.
02:30 There is no date for the verdict.
02:32 Thank you.
02:33 (APPLAUSE)
02:34 (END)
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