Luxembourg's Foreign Ministry says a resident of the European sovereign grand duchy has been sentenced to death in Iran.
A spokesperson for the Luxembourg Foreign Ministry confirmed the death sentence RFE/RL’s Radio Farda on December 23, though the person's name was not disclosed.
The person has been described as a resident of Luxembourg of Iranian descent but not a citizen. The charges against the person were unclear, though Iran has been engulfed in a wave of protests following the September 16 death of a young woman while she was in custody for allegedly violating the country's head scarf law.
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that given Luxembourg's opposition to the death penalty, Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has contacted his Iranian counterpart and asked the sentence not be carried out.
The governments of Iran and Luxembourg have not provided details of the conversation between the foreign ministers of the two countries regarding the case.
Luxembourg is one of the European Union countries that has publicly supported the Iranian protesters.
Some 15 legislators in Luxembourg, following similar moves by representatives of the parliaments of Germany, Austria, France, Sweden and several other European countries, have accepted the political sponsorship of a number of recent detainees in Iran.
The acceptance of political sponsorship of Iranian protesters is an attempt to save their lives as they are at risk of being executed after their arrests during the demonstrations.
Western countries have repeatedly charged that Iran is trying to take advantage of foreign countries by taking dual and foreign nationals hostage and then using them in prisoner swaps.
During the current wave of unrest, Iranian security forces have taken some 40 foreign nationals into custody, often without revealing any charges.
The news also comes as Iran and world powers stumbled to negotiate a revamped version of a 2015 nuclear deal that curbed Tehran's atomic sector in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. In September, the talks appeared to be headed for success, only to fail at the last minute. Both sides have blamed each other.