Appeal opens for ex-Iran official convicted in Sweden
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A former Iranian prison official sentenced to life in Sweden for crimes committed during a 1988 purge of dissidents appeared in court again on Wednesday as his appeals trial began.
The case relates to the killing of at least 5,000 prisoners across Iran, allegedly ordered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, to avenge attacks carried out by the exiled opposition group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) at the end of the 1980 Iran-Iraq War – 88.
Hamid Noury, 61, was convicted in July 2022 by a Stockholm district court of a “serious violation of international law” and “murder”.
It found that Noury had been a deputy prosecutor in a prison near Tehran at the time of the events and had “collected prisoners, brought them to the committee and escorted them to the place of execution”.
The lower court trial was the first related to the mass executions in Iran in the 1980s. It was particularly sensitive, as rights activists accuse senior Iranian officials now in power – including current President Ebrahim Raisi – of having been members of the committees that handed down the death sentences.
When the appeals trial began on Wednesday, Noury’s defense lawyer Thomas Bodström asked the court to acquit him or reduce his sentence.
Noury, wearing a white polo shirt, asked to make a statement but was told by Judge Robert Green that he had to wait until it was time for the defense to present its case.
Noury continued to speak, bemoaning the conditions in his prison and complaining of vision problems, waving several pairs of glasses at the judge. After repeated outbursts and reprimands, he was escorted out of the courtroom.
Noury was convicted for his role in the MEK killings and for participating in a second wave targeting “left-wing sympathizers who were considered to have renounced their Islamic faith,” the district court’s ruling said.
Noury had claimed that he was on leave during the period in question. He said he worked in another prison and denounced the allegations as a plot by the MEK to discredit the Islamic Republic.
Noury was arrested at an airport in Stockholm in November 2019 after Iranian dissidents in Sweden filed a police report against him.
The case has strained relations between Stockholm and Tehran, which has repeatedly called for Noury’s release and dismissed last year’s verdict as “political”.
During the original trial, protesters opposed the regime in Iran gathered outside the Stockholm courthouse. A group of about 100 showed up for Wednesday’s appeal.
“I think this trial will once again highlight what happened in Iran in 1988,” Shahin Gobadi, spokesman for the exiled opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told AFP.
“Today, after four months of protests and a revolution in Iran, people have a much better understanding of the brutality of this regime,” he added.