Iran summons Sweden’s chargé d’affaires after Iranian sentenced to life in prison for massacres in 1988

Tehran says court “has no jurisdiction” and says accusations stem from “false testimony”

July 15 () –

The Government of Iran has summoned this Friday the charge d’affaires of Sweden in Tehran to protest against the life sentence imposed by a Swedish court on a former Iranian official for his role in the mass execution and torture of opponents in 1988 in a jail in the Karaj city.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has indicated in a statement published on its website that it has submitted “an official note of protest” and has shown “firm objections” to the statements by the Swedish court in the case, while it has pointed out that the sentence is “illegal” and “contrary to the standards of International Law”.

Thus, he has stressed that the Swedish court “does not have jurisdiction” to try the case and has stated that “it has violated the principles of sovereignty and independence”, before stressing that the accusations derive from “false testimony” by “elements of terrorist groups whose hands are stained with the blood of more than 17,000 innocent Iranians.

In this way, it has said that the Swedish court has “whitewashed terrorists” and has pointed out that “it has acted against Sweden’s international obligations in the field of a non-selective fight against terrorism”, for which it has requested that the conviction be “overturned” and that the man, identified as Hamid Nuri, be released “immediately” and “compensated for damages”.

The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Naser Kanani, had already criticized the ruling late on Thursday, when he stressed that the process has been based on “unfounded and fabricated accusations against Iran and the country’s judicial system.” “It is clear to Iran that the Nuri case was just an excuse for political action with no legal validity,” he said.

Kanani also denounced that the man was arrested “in a deceptive scenario previously planned by elements of a terrorist group” and pointed out that Nuri “has been detained in isolation for 30 months, being deprived of his most basic human rights and subjected to systematic ill-treatment. , including beatings by prison guards”.

“Unfortunately, the Swedish judicial authorities, despite their claims of independence, gave space to the hypocritical terrorist group — in reference to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) — and did not allow Nuri to present witnesses to defend himself.” , has riveted.

Nuri was arrested in the European country in November 2019, after which a trial was opened against him in 2021 for his role in the killing of thousands of people. The purge focused on members of the PMOI, although numerous members of leftist and opposition parties such as Tudé, with a communist tendency, were also executed.

Iran’s current president, Ebrahim Raisi, was heavily criticized during the 2021 election campaign for his role as one of the four judges who oversaw execution orders, though he rejected the allegations and said he was merely defending national security.

The executions were carried out following a secret edict issued by the then great leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeini, after an armed incursion into Iran by the PMOI, an opposition group based in Iraq and banned by the authorities. Iranians, according to the report published by Amnesty in 2018.

Khomeini’s order came in the last phases of the war between Iran and Iraq (1980-1988), in which the PMOI, which actively participated in the revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlevi with an Islamist discourse mixed with an adaptation of the Marxist ideology, he fought on the side of Saddam Hussein’s regime after denouncing the actions of the religious leadership established by the ayatollahs.

The group was persecuted by the religious authorities established in Iran, which led the then leader of the group, Masud Rajavi, to reach a pact with Hussein in 1986 in the midst of the war between the two, which led Iran to the supreme leader of Iran to order the execution of alleged members and sympathizers of the organization.