STOCKHOLM: A Swedish court on Thursday handed a life sentence to former Iranian prison official Hamid Noury for crimes committed during a 1988 purge of dissidents, in the first trial related to the mass executions.
Noury, 61, was convicted of a “serious crime against international law” and “murder”, the Stockholm district court said in a statement.
“The sentence is life imprisonment.”
According to the court, Noury was an assistant prosecutor in a prison near Tehran at the time of the events.
“The investigation has shown that the accused, jointly and in collusion with others, participated in the commission of the criminal acts,” the court said.
“He has, under an alias and in the role of assistant to the deputy prosecutor, retrieved prisoners, brought them to the committee and escorted them to the execution site.”
The proceedings, which have been running since August 2021, have strained relations between Sweden and Iran, raising concerns about reprisals against Western prisoners held by the Islamic regime. Two Swedish-Iranian citizens are on death row.
The case related to the killing of at least 5,000 prisoners across Iran, allegedly ordered by supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
The killings were to avenge attacks carried out by exiled opposition group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) at the end of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
Noury was sentenced both for his role in the killings targeting the MEK and for participating in a second wave directed at “left-wing sympathisers who were deemed to have renounced their Islamic faith,” the court said.
The charge of “a serious crime against international law” related to the first wave and the “murder” charge related to the second.
Throughout the nine months of hearings, Noury, often theatrical and smiling, rejected the testimony of former detainees.
He argued that he was on leave during the period in question, and said he worked in another prison. Noury denounced the accusations as a plot by the MEK to discredit the Islamic Republic.
Noury’s lawyer Thomas Soderqvist told AFP they were “disappointed”, and that they would now review the verdict.
“The sentence will be appealed,” Soderqvist added.
Noury was arrested at a Stockholm airport in November 2019 after Iranian dissidents in Sweden filed police complaints against him.
During the trial, which briefly relocated to Albania to hear testimony at the end of 2021, MEK supporters protested loudly outside the Stockholm courthouse, and a few hundred had gathered ahead of the verdict.
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