Habib Farajollah Chaab was convicted for allegedly leading a group that bombed a military parade in Ahvaz in 2018.

The official news outlet of the Iranian judiciary on Sunday announced that Habib Farajollah Chaab’s death sentence had been confirmed for leading an Arab separatist group called the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz.

A lower court had issued the death sentence for “corruption on earth” in early December. Iran does not formally recognise dual nationality status.

The group, according to the judiciary website, has launched many “terrorist” operations on Iranian soil, leading to many deaths and injuries, including a 2018 attack on a military parade that killed 25 and wounded close to 250 people.

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

“Chaab was sentenced to death after several court sessions with the presence of his lawyer … The Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence,” Iran’s judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.

Souring relations

Iran’s relations with Sweden have increasingly soured in recent years, partly concerning the cases of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian official jailed in Sweden on alleged human rights abuses, and Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish researcher imprisoned in Tehran over espionage charges.

Chaab is not the only person incarcerated in Iran over ties with the Arab separatist group.

Last week, a court in Ahvaz sentenced six other men accused of being members of the group to execution. It said they “implemented orders by their European-based leaders”, including Chaab.

The men were sentenced on charges of conducting separate “terrorist” operations between 2017 and 2019 that killed two members of the Basij paramilitary force in Abadan and a law enforcement member and a military conscript in Khuzestan.