November 12 () –
The Iranian Foreign Minister, Hosein Amirabdolahian, has held a telephone conversation with his Swedish counterpart, Tobias Billström, from whom he has demanded the release of Hamid Nuri, an Iranian citizen sentenced to life imprisonment imposed for mass executions and torture of opponents in 1988 in a prison in the city of Karaj.
Amirabdolahian has warned in the call of “consequences” in bilateral relations for the “illegal detention” of Nuri, according to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA.
The head of Iranian diplomacy has criticized the “politicization” of Nuri’s case and linked it to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), an exiled armed party and organization.
“In recent years, some issues have affected relations between the two countries as a result mainly of the actions of a third party,” Amirabdolahian said.
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 executions were carried out following a secret edict issued by the then great leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, after an armed incursion into Iran by the PMOI, an opposition group based in Iraq and outlawed 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 Pahlavi with an Islamist discourse mixed with an adaptation of the Marxist ideology, he fought on the side of the Saddam Hussein 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 middle 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.
