Family of imprisoned Iranians in Sweden harassed by MKO members
TEHRAN – The family of an Iranian citizen who is on trial in Sweden have released shocking accusations of assault while they continue to fight a long-running legal battle for his release, Press TV reported on Thursday.
Hamid Nouri, who was arrested at Stockholm Airport in 2019, is facing charges against him, including human rights violations against prisoners dating back to 1988.
After his arrest, Nouri’s wife told Press TV that he had been held in a solidarity prison, physically assaulted by prison staff and subjected to mental torture. Nouri and his family deny all allegations. His detention has been branded illegal by Tehran.
Not only has the trial itself been condemned by the Iranian authorities as “illegal”, but also the treatment of the accused’s family.
Shocking images of Nouri’s family being harassed by anti-Iranian dissidents have deepened Iran’s outrage at Sweden for handling the case.
Nouri’s family has been in and out of court all week. Every time they arrive, supporters of a notorious terrorist group, the People’s Mujahideen in Iran, or MKO, harass and threaten them. The Swedish authorities are slow to respond.
The accusation again Nouri is mostly taken from members of the same group. MKO has been accused of having produced atrocities several times.
At the same time, Swedish prosecutors have demanded the highest sentence of life imprisonment for Nouri, accusing the former Iranian judiciary of abusing prisoners in 1988.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has demanded the immediate release of Nouri, saying Tehran considers his detention and trial “illegal”.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the detention and trial of Hamid Nouri, an Iranian citizen, illegal and demands his immediate release,” Amir Abdollahian said in a telephone conversation with his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde on Wednesday.
The trial against Nouri has become an excuse for some to ignore a historical fact in the history of the terrorist group MEK.
During the arrest and the 90 trials held by the MEK and the Swedish judiciary, the MEK members who testify as witnesses against Nouri have repeatedly claimed that they committed independent acts and did not at any time cooperate with the Ba’athist army under Saddam Hussein’s command, and have not fought against the Iranian people.
Kenneth Lewis, a lawyer for the terrorist group MEK who appears in court as a witness and plaintiff in the case, did not agree with part of the Swedish prosecutor’s indictment and said: “There was no” armed conflict between Iran and Iraq “, and MEK’s armed conflict with the Iranian government was a “non-international armed conflict.”
He also acknowledged that there was cooperation between former MEK leader Massoud Rajavi and Saddam Hussein, but stressed that there was no evidence that MEK was part of the Iraqi army.
The accusation comes because there are hundreds of documents, written, oral testimonies and video evidence that Rajavi often met with Saddam and other Ba’athist officials and asked them for financial and military support for terrorist acts against Iranians.
The culmination of this aid was manifested in Operation Forough Javidan.
“As you know, I was in Paris from 1981 to 1986,” Rajavi said in a meeting with General Tahir Jalil, head of the Iraqi intelligence service in 1999, referring to previous relations between the MEK group and the United States and France.
“In those years … we were not called terrorists, even though they knew who blew up the Republican Party headquarters in Iran … they knew who and what destroyed the regime’s president and prime minister. Both the White House and the Elysee Palace, which we were in. contact with, knew well, but they did not call us terrorists at all “, he said.
Not only did the MEK fight against Iran with Saddam’s army, they were also used as a tool by the Saddam regime to suppress Shia opponents in the south and the Kurds in the north.