Sweden says Iran has executed a Swedish citizen

STOCKHOLM - Sweden’s foreign minister on March 18 said that Iran had executed a Swedish citizen, after Iranian authorities announced the first execution of a man convicted of spying since the start of its war against Israel and the United States.

“It is with dismay that I have received information that a Swedish citizen was executed in Iran earlier today,” Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in a statement.

Since the man’s arrest during in June 2025, Sweden has “repeatedly raised the case at various levels with Iranian representatives,” she added.

“In these contacts, we have emphasised Sweden’s expectation that our citizen will receive a fair trial and not be sentenced to death,” Stenergard said.

“It is obvious to us that the legal process which led to the execution of the Swedish citizen was not conducted in accordance with the rule of law,” she added.

She did not identify the citizen who was executed.

In a separate statement, the Nordic country’s foreign ministry said it had “summoned Iran’s ambassador to protest the execution of a Swedish citizen”.

It added that it had “delivered a strong condemnation” of the execution and of the “flawed legal process” that led to his conviction and sentencing.

Earlier, Iran’s judiciary website, Mizan Online, said a man named Kouroush Keyvani was executed for spying for Israel, and that he was arrested during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel in June 2025.

It listed details of his meetings with agents from Israel’s Mossad spy agency and said he received training in “six European countries and in Tel Aviv”.

This was the first public announcement of such an execution since Israel and the United States launched strikes on Iran on Feb 28, killing its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggering another war that has spread across the Middle East. AFP