Sweden Charges Iranian For Alleged 1988 'war Crimes'

Swedish prosecutors said Tuesday they were charging an Iranian man for "war crimes and murder" over the execution of more than 100 political prisoners in 1988 in Karaj, Iran

Stockholm, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jul, 2021 ) :Swedish prosecutors said Tuesday they were charging an Iranian man for "war crimes and murder" over the execution of more than 100 political prisoners in 1988 in Karaj, Iran.

The case against 60-year-old Hamid Noury, who was arrested in Sweden in 2019, concerns his alleged part in the mass killings of prisoners towards the end of the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq.

Noury was arrested upon his arrival at the airport in Stockholm, with Swedish media reporting at the time that he was visiting relatives.

Human rights groups have been campaigning for years for justice for what they consider to be the extrajudicial execution of thousands of Iranians, mostly young people, across the country in the late 1980s.

Sweden's Prosecution Authority said in a statement that the prisoners had been linked to the "People's Mujahedin of Iran," a political organisation seeking to overthrow the clerical leadership whose armed branch had launched several attacks against Iran.

In the summer of 1988, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini "issued an order to execute all prisoners held in Iranian prisons who sympathised with and were loyal in their convictions to the Mujahedin," according to Swedish prosecutors.

Noury held the position of "assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison," on the outskirts of Karaj, west of Tehran, the statement said.

"The accused is suspected of participating, together with other perpetrators, in these mass executions and, as such, intentionally taking the lives of a large number of prisoners, who sympathised with the Mujahedin and, additionally, of subjecting prisoners to severe suffering which is deemed torture and inhuman treatment," it said.

In the charge sheet, seen by AFP, Prosecutor Kristina Lindhoff Carleson said that these actions constituted a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Noury's lawyer told AFP that he denies the charges against him.

Facing him in the trial is a group of more than 30 plaintiffs, made up of former prisoners who witnessed the alleged atrocities and relatives of victims.