Iran jails two Swedish men for drug trafficking

TEHRAN: An Iranian court has sentenced two Swedish men for drug trafficking to eight and five years in prison, judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi said Tuesday.
The pair, Stephen Kevin Gilbert and Simon Kasper Brown, were arrested in July 2020 at an airport in Tehran as they were about to leave the country, Setayeshi said.
“Simon Kasper Brown, a Swedish citizen, was sentenced to five years in prison and fined for transporting more than 21,000 illegal pills of tramadol,” an opioid painkiller, Setayeshi said.
“Stephen Kevin Gilbert, another citizen of this country, was sentenced to eight years in prison, 60 lashes and a fine, for being in possession of 9.8 kilograms (21 pounds) of opium resin,” he said.
Iran is a key smuggling route for opium and heroin from neighboring Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer.
The trial of the men — accused of being part of an “international drug trafficking gang” — opened in September 2021.
On Tuesday, the judicial authority said the two convicts “had nothing to do” with another Swede arrested in July on allegations of “espionage,” whose identity has not been revealed.
This arrest came against a backdrop of diplomatic tensions between Tehran and Stockholm, after a Swedish court sentenced a former Iranian prison official to life for war crimes during mass executions in the Islamic republic in 1988.
Hamid Noury, a former official in Iran’s judiciary accused of war crimes over the killing of prisoners in Iran during the 1980s, was arrested at a Stockholm airport in November 2019.
He received a life sentence from a Swedish court on July 14.
Iran dismissed the verdict as “political” and has called for his release.

Iran jails two Swedish men for drug trafficking