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RFL/RE – Tehran says it summoned Sweden’s ambassador over “baseless and false allegations” made against a former Iranian official, Hamid Nouri, at a trial relating to the mass killings ordered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1988.
Swedish prosecutors have requested a life sentence for Nouri, , who has been charged with international war crimes and human rights abuses relating to the murders of more than 100 people.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on May 2 that it had summoned Swedish Ambassador Mattias Lentz a day earlier “to convey the Islamic republic’s strong protest at the baseless and false allegations leveled by the Swedish prosecutor against Iran during his comments” to the court.
Scores of survivors and victims’ family members have given testimony in the ongoing trial in Stockholm’s District Court that marks the first time a member of the Iranian regime has formally faced criminal charges relating to the mass killings ordered by Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.
Witnesses say Nouri was essentially a henchman whose job was to help determine which prisoners would enter the “corridor of death.”
Nouri has denied the allegations against him, casting himself as a small fish — an employee of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office who was stationed at a different prison from 1982-93 and was on leave when the 1988 killings took place.
But since the trial started in August, multiple witnesses have testified that Nouri was a decision-maker who was, in fact, the deputy to the prison’s lead prosecutor, Mohammad Moghiseh, known in Iran as the “hanging judge.”
The trial is being held in Sweden under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the handling of serious cases such as war crimes regardless of where the offenses were committed.
