In a landmark case that is sure to fuel tensions in Iran, an Iranian official accused of complicity in the 1988 murder of hundreds of political dissidents goes on trial in Sweden on Tuesday.
While working as an assistant to the deputy governor of Gohardasht prison in Karaj, near Tehran, Hamid Noury, 60, is accused by Swedish prosecutors of “intentionally taking the lives of a very large number of prisoners sympathetic to or belonging to the People’s Mujahedin” (MEK) between 30 July and 16 August 1988.
Human rights groups have long pushed for justice for the estimated 5,000 detainees slain across Iran on the instructions of supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini in retaliation for attacks carried out by the MEK at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict.
According to Swedish court officials, Tuesday’s lawsuit is the first of its sort against a person accused of the murders.
A group of 30 people, including justice advocate and former political prisoner Iraj Mesdaghi, brought the claims to the Swedish authorities’ notice.
Mesdaghi enticed Noury to the Nordic country with the lure of a luxurious cruise after building an evidence dossier of “several thousand pages” on the former prison official. Noury was apprehended as soon as he set foot on Swedish land.
Sweden’s universal jurisdiction concept means that Swedish courts can try someone for serious crimes like murder or war crimes regardless of where the alleged crimes occurred.
“This is the first instance in another country that one of the persecutors has been held accountable,” Mesdaghi told AFP.
Noury’s lawyer, Thomas Soderqvist, told AFP that Noury “denies any charge of involvement in the supposed executions of 1988.”
