According to local reports, prison officials stepped in to rescue the Swiss national at the Semnan prison, some 180 kilometres (110 miles) east of Tehran. But their efforts were in vain.
ADVERTISEMENTA Swiss national detained in Iran on espionage charges has died at a prison in rural Semnan province, in what state media reported to be suicide.
The report by the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency did not identify the man but said the man had asked his cellmate to bring him food and then killed himself while he was alone.
“This Swiss citizen had been arrested for espionage by the security institutions, and there is also documentation of this, and his case was being investigated and dealt with,” Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, head of the province’s justice department, said, without mentioning the name of the individual.
The Chief Justice of Semnan Province further added: “This Swiss national was being kept in a suite with another inmate in Semnan prison, who this morning asked his co-conspirator to provide him with food from the prison buffet. This prisoner took advantage of the time he was left alone in the suite and committed suicide.”
“All the evidence and documentation of the whereabouts of this person have been checked, and according to the documentation, it is suicide,” the chief justice of Semnan province said.
According to him, prison officials stepped in to rescue the Swiss national at the Semnan prison, which is some 180 kilometres (110 miles) east of Tehran, the Iranian capital. But their efforts were in vain.
“Efforts to save him were unsuccessful,” local media reported.
Iran has a long history of detaining nationals of Western countries for alleged law-breaking or “espionage”. Western countries accuse Tehran of using them as “hostages” and a tool of pressure in negotiations with Western capitals by “arbitrarily” detaining Western nationals.
Pierre-Alain Eltschinger, a spokesman for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, confirmed the death in an email.
“The Swiss Embassy in Tehran is in contact with the local authorities to clarify the circumstances of the death in an Iranian prison,” he said, adding officials were assisting the man’s relatives.
Iran has been in the middle of diplomatic tension with the West following a three-nation tangle over the fates of two prisoners that became complicated for Italy, a traditional ally of Washington, which also maintains good relations with Tehran.
In December, Italian authorities arrested Mohammad Abedini at Milan’s Malpensa airport on a US warrant for supplying Iran with the drone technology that was used in a January 2024 attack on a US outpost in Jordan that killed three American soldiers.
Three days later, an Italian reporter for the Il Foglio daily paper, Cecilia Salawas arrested in Tehran. Iranian authorities released her on Tuesday after concerted diplomatic efforts from Rome.
For its part, Switzerland has served as the protecting power for the United States in Iran since Washington ended its diplomatic relations with Tehran in the wake of the 1979 US Embassy takeover and hostage crisis.
