Tehran slams Sweden over ‘political’ verdict against ex-official

Iran “strongly condemned” a Swedish court’s life sentence for a former Iranian official involved in the deaths of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s.

Earlier on Thursday, Stockholm’s district court found Hamid Nouri guilty of “murder” and “serious crimes against international law.”

The spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanani, said the ruling was political and based on “fabricated allegations” at a court which “lacked qualification.” He accused the Swedish judicial system of “submission to the propaganda machine” of the Mujahedin-e-Khaleq (MEK), a foreign-based opposition group designated by Tehran as a terrorist entity.

The ruling was the first ever in the case of the mass executions, and followed a 30-month trial that saw a plethora of testimony by former inmates recounting their ordeal at Gohardasht prison outside the Iranian capital, Tehran. Nouri, according to those accounts, was a deputy prosecutor who would march death row inmates to the gallows. Claiming a different identity and occasionally smiling, the 61-year-old defendant, persistently denied the charges.

Estimates by rights advocacy groups put the tally of the notorious executions at over 5,000. The mass sentences were ordered by late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but were issued against individual inmates by a  panel of three judges, one of them current President Ebrahim Raisi, then a Tehran deputy prosecutor.

A group of Iranians, including some survivors and family members of the victims chanted and shed joyful tears outside the venue of the news conference in Stockholm. The Iranian Foreign Ministry described the jubilation as “hooliganism.” 

Iran is currently holding two Swedish-Iranian nationals in its jails, both facing death sentences. The fate of one of them, Ahmad Reza Djalali — an academic found guilty of espionage — has widely been linked to the Nouri trial. Iran warned earlier in May that Djalali’s execution was imminent, drawing strong criticism from Amnesty International, which argued that the medical doctor was being held hostage by Tehran for retaliation.

The Iranian spokesman warned that the Islamic Republic will hold Sweden responsible for strained bilateral relations from the Nouri verdict.