Trial of Hamid Nouri | |
---|---|
Court | Stockholm District Court |
Started | August 2021 |
Decided | May 2022 |
Verdict | Life in prison |
The trial of Hamid Nouri, an Iranian official detained in Sweden, took place in November 2019. Nouri was found guilty of being a key figure in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, where according to different estimates between 2,800 to 30,000 Iranians were massacred. [1] [2] In early 2021 charges of murder and war crimes were filed against the former Iranian prosecutor, where Nouri was accused of "torture and inhuman treatment." [3] [4] [5] The trial constituted the first time someone has been charged in relation to the 1988 massacre of political prisoners. [6] Nouri was charged with more than 100 murders and "a serious crime against international law", and was expected to provide evidence implicating Ebrahim Raisi, president of Iran, at the time of the trial. [7]
Nouri was sentenced to life in prison and expulsion with a permanent bar from re-entering Sweden, [8] and ordered to pay damages amounting to 1,2 million SEK. [9]
Following an appeal, the Svea Court of Appeal officially upheld Nouri's life sentence in December 2023; [10] Ebrahim Raisi was also involved in the case as a member of the "Death Commissions in Tehran". [10] [11] [12]
Hamid Nouri, born on 29 April 1961, was known as Hamid Abbasi among political inmates. He was an IRGC jail guard recruited by the Iranian Judiciary. He assisted prosecutors in Evin and Gohardasht Prison and worked closely with Mohammad Moghiseh, the prison's associate prosecutor, and was also a member of the Gohardasht Prison Death Commission in 1988. [13] The 1988 killings targeted members of People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a group that advocated overthrowing the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. [14] In 2016, an audio recording was posted online of a high-level official meeting that took place in August 1988 between Hossein Ali Montazeri and the officials responsible for the mass killings in Tehran. [15] In the recording, Hossein Ali Montazeri is heard saying that the ministry of intelligence used the MeK's armed incursion in 1988 as a pretext to carry out the mass killings, which "had been under consideration for several years". [16] [17]
The 1988 executions resulted from a fatwa ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini. [18] The fatwa ordered the execution of all the Iranian prisoners that supported and were loyal to the MEK. [19]
An audio file by former Deputy Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, emerged in 2016 where Montazeri is heard telling Hossein Ali Nayeri, Morteza Eshraghi, Ebrahim Raisi, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi that "the biggest crime in the Islamic Republic, for which the history will condemn us, has been committed at your hands, and they'll write your names as criminals in the history." [20]
On 9 November 2019, Swedish police arrested Nouri at Arlanda Airport. Swedish police had been alerted to Nouri's imminent arrival after a tip-off from his former son-in-law, Hirossch Sadeghi. Sadeghi, after unsuccessfully trying to alert two journalists at the BBC Persian and VOA Farsi, found Iraj Mesdaghi, a survivor of the executions. [4] In the presence of Sadeghi, Mesdaghi telephoned Kaveh Moussavi, an Oxford-based human rights lawyer in the UK. Moussavi immediately mobilised a legal team with colleagues Dr Rebecca Mooney and Matthew Jury. They interviewed several witnesses, and drafted documents setting out the factual and legal basis on which Nouri was suspected of committing grave crimes during the 1988 prison massacres in Iran. Moussavi, Mooney and Jury, with Swedish state attorney Göran Hjalmarsson, submitted the documents and evidence to Sweden's War Crimes Police on 4 November 2019, alerting them to Nouri's imminent arrival and urging the authorities to arrest, investigate and prosecute Nouri for crimes against international law. Nouri was arrested under the laws of universal jurisdiction, in which a national court can prosecute anyone for atrocities, regardless of where they were committed. [21]
An investigation organised by the Borumand Foundation conducted by the UK leading Counsel Geoffrey Roberston QC had earlier concluded that egregious violations of international human rights laws had been carried out by the regime in Iran in the aftermath of the Death Fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini ordering the killing of political prisoners who had remained "steadfast" in their views. In 2016, an investigation committee examining the 1988 massacre and individuals implicated was proposed by Maryam Rajavi. [22] This committee looked at Moghisei, Lashgari, and Nouri. These efforts seek a trial for all government officials involved in the 1988 massacre, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi, and Supreme Court Chief Mohseni-Ejei. [23] On 3 May 2021, 152 former UN officials, Nobel laureates, former leaders of state, and human rights experts called for an international investigation. [24]
Nouri was first detained in 2019. He was an assistant public prosecutor who reportedly took on an important role in the execution of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. [25] Nouri was accused of providing names to prosecutors, giving death sentences, and taking prisoners to execution chambers. [26] [27]
Prosecutors in Stockholm district court recited charges against Hamid Nouri, including murder and a serious crime against international law. He was allegedly assistant to the deputy prosecutor of Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, outside Tehran, between July 30 and August 16, 1988. [28] Nouri was also accused of "torture, execution, and secret burial of the victims and not letting their families know about their burial place." [25]
Nouri's lawyer, Daniel Marcus, said he would counter all claims during the trial. [29] The three-day trial had been expected to take place in April 2022. [30] In 2018, the UN also stated that the 1988 massacre was a "crime against humanity". [31] Swedish prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence, life imprisonment. [32]
The trial started in August 2021 in Stockholm District Court and lasted for 92 days, ending May 2022.
On 14 July 2022, Nouri was sentenced to life in prison and expulsion with a permanent bar from re-entering Sweden, and ordered to pay damages amounting to 1.2 million SEK.
In Swedish law, a person sentenced to life imprisonment may apply to have the sentence commuted to a fixed-term sentence after having served at least ten years of the sentence. [33] If the sentence is commuted, the fixed-term sentence shall not be less than the maximum term of imprisonment that may be imposed for the crime, which for murder and a serious a crime against international law is 18 years. If and when he is released, he will be expelled from the country.
Nouri appealed the verdict, and the appeal court proceedings began on January 11, 2023. [34] However, his request was rejected by the Svea Court of Appeal in December of the same year, [10] and his life sentence was subsequently confirmed. [10] [11] [12]
Lawyer Kenneth Lewis said that the sentence of execution of political prisoners was issued to members and supporters of the MEK and suggested that Khomeini had likely issued the sentence as a result of MEK operations before Operation Forough Javidan. [35] According to Lewis, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had engaged in armed clashes against the MEK dressed in Kurdish uniforms to show that the MEK were fighting against pro-Iranian Kurds together with Iraq. Lewis then said that reporters in attendance during these clashes did not document the presence of any Iraqi forces, and that by the end of the war the MEK had contacted the Red Cross with the aim of freeing 1,500 captured war prisoners back to Iran. [35]
The government in Iran "expressed outrage" over the trial, calling it "completely illegal" and "politically motivated". [36] Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib said that Ahmad Reza Djalali's "espionage for the Zionist regime has been proven and his death sentence has gone through all judicial stages. The Swedish government, on behalf of the Zionist regime and the United States, illegally detained our citizen Mr. Hamid Nouri in Sweden shortly after his arrest and trial, and took him hostage." [37]
The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet said that the recent arrests of Swedes in Iran and the death sentence of Ahmad Reza Djalali were a "warning" in retaliation for Nouri's trial. [38] [39] [40]
Human right groups said that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has a pattern of hostage diplomacy where dual or foreign nationals are "detained on trumped-up charges of espionage and then leveraged politically to release frozen funds, or to be exchanged for Iranian citizens incarcerated in other countries." [41]
The trial relocated to Durrës, Albania for two weeks in order to facilitate testimonies from People's Mujahedin of Iran witnesses. [42] [27] The first trial session took place on November 10. [43]
Testimonies were given by witnesses including members of the MEK. The trial received testimonies from victims telling of torture, mass hangings, and "brutal summary justice". Reza Falahi told AFP that he had seen Nouri while he was at “the death corridor”, and “whenever they read some people’s names he followed them toward the death chamber.” [44] [45]
Mohammad Zand, who was arrested in 1981 for supporting the MEK, was the first plaintiff and witness at the court in Durres. According to Zand, Nouri participated in taking people to be executed. Zand also said that these were "only a small part of the clerical regime's crimes". [46] According to accusers, Nouri's duties included ushering prisoners to panels and to their executions. His arrest is considered a "significant victory" for victims of human rights violations in Iran. [47]
Evin Prison is a prison located in the Evin neighborhood of Tehran, Iran. The prison has been the primary site for the housing of Iran's political prisoners since 1972, before and after the Islamic Revolution, in a purpose-built wing nicknamed "Evin University" due to the number of students and intellectuals housed there. Evin Prison has been accused of committing "serious human rights abuses" against its political dissidents and critics of the government.
The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) or Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), is an Iranian dissident organization that was previously armed but has now transitioned primarily into a political advocacy group. Its headquarters are currently in Albania. The group's ideology is rooted in "Islam with revolutionary Marxism," but after the Iranian Revolution became about overthrowing the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and installing its own government. At one point the MEK was Iran's "largest and most active armed dissident group," and it is still sometimes presented by Western political backers as a major Iranian opposition group, but it is also deeply unpopular today within Iran, largely due to its siding with Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War.
Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri was an Iranian Shia Islamic theologian, Islamic democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution and one of the highest-ranking authorities in Shīʿite Islam. He was once the designated successor to the revolution's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, but they had a falling-out in 1989 over government policies that Montazeri claimed infringed on people's freedom and denied them their rights, especially after the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners. Montazeri spent his later years in Qom and remained politically influential in Iran, but was placed in house arrest in 1997 for questioning "the unaccountable rule exercised by the supreme leader", Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in his stead. He was known as the most knowledgeable senior Islamic scholar in Iran and a grand marja of Shia Islam. Ayatollah Montazeri was said to be one of Khamenei's teachers.
Special Clerical Court, or Special Court for Clerics is a special Iranian judicial system for prosecuting crimes, both ordinary and political, committed by Islamic clerics and scholars. The Special Clerical Court can defrock and disbar Islamic jurists, give sentences of imprisonment, corporal punishment, execution, etc. The court functions independently of the regular Iranian judicial framework, with its own security and prison systems, "generally secret and confidential" cases, proceedings and procedures, and is accountable only to the Supreme Leader of Iran,. The most senior Islamic politician to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution was Abdollah Nouri who was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent by the court in 1999.
Sayyid Assadollah Ladjevardi was an Iranian conservative politician, prosecutor and warden. He was one of the officials responsible for the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, and was assassinated by the People's Mujahedin of Iran on 23 August 1998.
The state of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been criticized by Iranians and international human rights activists, writers, and NGOs. The United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission have condemned prior and ongoing abuses in Iran in published critiques and several resolutions. The government is criticized both for restrictions and punishments that follow the Islamic Republic's constitution and law, and for "extrajudicial" actions by state actors, such as the torture, rape, and killing of political prisoners, and the beatings and killings of dissidents and other civilians. Capital punishment in Iran remains a matter of international concern.
A series of mass executions of political prisoners ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini and carried out by Iranian officials took place across Iran, starting on 19 July 1988 and continuing for approximately five months. The killings took place in at least 32 cities across the country, and estimates of the number killed range from 2,500 to 30,000, many of whom were also subject to torture.
Massoud Rajavi became the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) in 1979. In 1985, he married Maryam Rajavi, who became the co-leader of the MEK. After leaving Iran in 1981, he resided in France and Iraq. He disappeared shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and it is not known whether he is still alive. This has left Maryam Rajavi as the public face of the MEK.
Iran is a constitutional, Islamic theocracy. Its official religion is the doctrine of the Twelver Jaafari School. Iran's law against blasphemy derives from Sharia. Blasphemers are usually charged with "spreading corruption on earth", or mofsed-e-filarz, which can also be applied to criminal or political crimes. The law against blasphemy complements laws against criticizing the Islamic regime, insulting Islam, and publishing materials that deviate from Islamic standards.
The chain murders of Iran were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other.
Mehdi Hashemi was an Iranian Shi'a cleric who after the 1979 Iranian Revolution became a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. He was defrocked by the Special Clerical Court and executed by the Islamic Republic in September 1987. Officially he was guilty of sedition, murder, and related charges, but others suspect his true crime was opposition to the regime's secret dealings with the United States.
2009 Iran poll protests trial refers to a series of trials conducted after 2009 Iranian presidential election. Over 140 defendants, including prominent politicians, academics and writers, were put on trial for participating in the 2009 Iranian election protests. The defendants were accused of orchestrating "colour revolution" in Iran, and "exposing cases of violations of human rights." The trials were widely condemned by world leaders both in Iran and worldwide as a "show trial" with coerced confessions.
Iran–Sweden relations are foreign relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Sweden.
Hedayatollah Hatami was an Iranian man who was allegedly hanged during the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners. He was one of at 1,000 people identified in a United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Representative's Report entitled "Names and Particulars of Persons Allegedly Executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran from July–December 1988", published on January 26, 1989. Although information about Hatami's arrest and trial was never released, the U.N. report noted that political prisoners of all types were included in the executions: "Most of the alleged victims were members of the Mojahedin. However, members of the Tudeh Party, People's Fedaiyan Organization, Rahe Kargar, and Komala Organization and 11 mollahs were also said to be among the alleged victims." Hatami had been an active member of the Tudeh Party.
Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani was a political prisoner in Iran who was executed on 1 June 2014. His execution was highly controversial due to accusations that Khosravi did not receive due process or fair treatment during his trial or leading up to his death.
Sayyid Ebrahim Raisolsadati, commonly known as Ebrahim Raisi, is an Iranian Principlist politician, Muslim jurist, and the eighth and current president of Iran since 3 August 2021, following his election to the presidency in the 2021 election.
Iraj Mesdaghi is an Iranian writer and human rights activist. He has lived in Stockholm, Sweden since 1994. He supported the People's Mujahedin of Iran before becoming one of its critics. Mesdaghi has written several books and articles on the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners in Iran.
Hassan Zare Dehnavi, known as Judge Haddad or Hassan Haddad was an Iranian judge and prosecutor. He was the Deputy Prosecutor for Security Affairs of the Tehran Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office of the Iranian Revolutionary Court. He was accused of multiple human rights violations against dissenters of the Iranian regime during his career; according to Radio Farda, he had a long history of human rights abuses, convictions of many political and civil activists, and his violent and illegal treatment of defendants.
Iranian complainant mothers or Iranian Mothers for Justice are mothers whose children were killed by the agents of the Islamic Republic in various protests in Iran. These women are the mothers of people who were killed during the 2017–2018 Iranian protests, the 2019–2020 Iranian protests, the 2021-2022 Iranian protests and the downing of the Ukraine Flight by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Air Defense.
Johan Floderus is a Swedish diplomat and European Union official. He first started working for the European Commission in 2019, serving as an aide to the then-incumbent European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, before joining the European External Action Service two years later.