A Swedish national who was kidnapped by Iranian security agents has had a death sentence confirmed by the country’s Supreme Court.

Habib Chaab – the founder of a separatist group – had been lured to Turkey from his home in Sweden, where he was snatched by Iranian agents.

Chaab – who holds joint Swedish-Iranian nationality – is also the former leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), a state in the oil-rich Khuzestan Province in south-western Iran.

The Iranian authorities accused him of being the leader of a “terrorist group”, Harakat al-Nidal, and of plotting and carrying out “numerous bombings and terrorist operations”.

Mizan Online, the Iranian judiciary’s official website, said in a statement that the death sentence had been confirmed.

The statement boasted that Chaab had been tricked into going to Turkey, “after leaving Sweden by intelligence ploys”.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom has slammed the sentence, saying it was “an inhumane and irreversible punishment and that Sweden, together with the rest of the EU, condemns its use in all circumstances.”

Billstrom also said that Sweden’s Foreign Ministry, as well as its embassy in Tehran, “are now working intensively to get further clarity into the information.”

In a formal ruling, the Iranian Supreme Court confirmed on Sunday, 12th March the death sentence “on charges of corruption on earth through the formation, management, and leadership” of the organisation.”

Chaab, who is also known as Habib Asyud, disappeared during a trip to Turkey in October 2020.

He then surfaced a month later in footage shown on Iranian state television in which he claimed responsibility for an attack and for working with Saudi intelligence services.

Iran routinely uses torture and coercion to force prisoners to make confessions that it then broadcasts.