STOCKHOLM — An Iranian journalist who traveled to Sweden with the foreign minister of Iran last week and fled during the trip is trying to claim asylum in Europe over fears of arrest.

The journalist, Amir Tohid Fazel, said in an interview that he had managed to slip away from the delegation that accompanied Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister.

“I said I was going to go smoke,” Mr. Fazel explained. “Then I started to walk toward a gathering of people and pretended to be talking on my phone. When I was in the group of people I started to run.”

He stopped to change clothes and discard the sim card in his phone, then hailed a taxi that took him to a police station, where he asked for asylum.