TEHRAN – Iran said it had called Sweden’s ambassador following a request from prosecutors in the Nordic country for life imprisonment for a former Iranian official.
The Foreign Ministry in Tehran late Sunday “strongly condemned” the arrest and trial of Hamid Noury, 61, as “illegal” and demanded that the trial be stopped and that he be released.
Noury, who has been on trial in Stockholm since August last year, is charged with, among other things, crimes against humanity and war crimes for having been involved in what the court heard were the executions of a large number of prisoners in the 1980s.
Lawyers for Noury, who was arrested at Stockholm Airport in November 2019, have denied that he was present for the alleged murders.
The prosecutor said the detainees were members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an exile opposition organization that Tehran considers a “terrorist group” and has banned since 1981.
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The MEK was originally a supporter of the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who deposed the Shah. But it quickly ended up in Tehran, supporting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the war between Iran and Iraq and being blamed for a series of attacks in the early 1980s.
The courtroom sketch shows the Iranian accused Hamid Noury (2nd from the left) sitting in Stockholm District Court together with his defense lawyer Daniel Marcus (3rd from the left) at the beginning of the trial for war crimes and murders, August 10, 2021. (Anders Humlebo / AFP)
Swedish Ambassador Mattias Lentz was called after a trial on Thursday when prosecutors demanded the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for Noury.
In a Twitter post, Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised its citizens against unnecessary travel to the Islamic Republic “due to the security situation”.
Swedish courts try Noury according to the principle of universal jurisdiction that allows them to handle serious cases such as war crimes regardless of where the crimes were committed.
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