A Swedish court sentences a former Iranian official to life in prison for the executions of opponents in 1988

July 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –

A Swedish court on Thursday sentenced a former Iranian official to life in prison for his role in the mass execution and torture of opponents in 1988 in a prison in the city of Karaj, located on the outskirts of the capital, Tehran.

The convicted man, Hamid 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, according to the Swedish newspaper ‘Aftonbladet’.

The court has ruled that Nuri be deported and pay compensation for damages to the relatives of the survivors, without the defense having said whether it will appeal and without the Iranian authorities having ruled on the ruling.

Balkis Jarrá, interim director for Justice of the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), has said that “after more than 30 years, the verdict in Sweden is a significant moment for the survivors and the relatives of those who were executed in a summary by the Iranian authorities in the summer of 1988”.

“The verdict sends a message to the highest officials in Iran implicated in these crimes that they cannot remain forever beyond the reach of justice,” he said.

The NGO Amnesty International had previously indicated that around 5,000 people were executed by the authorities, although it warned that the figure could be even higher. The purge focused on members of the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (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.