STOCKHOLM (CN) — Swedish prosecutors on Tuesday read aloud the names of 136 murder victims at the outset of a novel trial of a man accused of acting as a prosecutor in a so-called Iranian death commission in 1988.
Hamid Noury has been charged with multiple counts of murder for assisting in executing political prisoners under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows Sweden and other countries that have adopted the principle to investigate and prosecute certain serious crimes, regardless of where they occurred. The trial of the 60-year-old Iranian man opened on Tuesday morning before the Stockholm District Court.
Universal jurisdiction has been used to bring perpetrators of war crimes and genocide to justice for decades, but nations typically only utilize it when the suspect is residing within their borders. Noury was only visiting Sweden in 2019 when he was arrested at the Stockholm airport by police.
Iran is not a party to the 2003 Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, and attempts to create an ad hoc tribunal for Iranian crimes have been blocked by Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council.
“Universal jurisdiction laws are a key tool against impunity for heinous crimes, especially when no other viable justice option exists,” Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
The arrest and trial have been awkward for the Iranian government. Last week, the country swore in Ebrahim Raisi as Supreme Leader. Raisi served on the same committee as Noury during the Iran-Iraq War, deciding which political prisoners at a jail outside Tehran would live and who would die.
The bloody, eight-year conflict broke out in 1980 when Iraq launched a full-scale invasion into neighboring Iran. Tensions between the two Middle Eastern countries had long been high but were exacerbated by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which put Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in charge of the country. After reaching a stalemate in the war that left more than a million people dead, both countries agreed to a U.N.-backed ceasefire in 1988.
Several days later, however, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization, an armed group based in Iraq that opposed the new regime in Iran, began an offensive to topple the Iranian government. The group was defeated by the Iran military.
In response, Khomeini ordered an investigation into political opponents in Iran, including many members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization. Survivors describe a death corridor in the Gohardasht Prison, a facility just outside of the capital Tehran, where prisoners were first taken to a sham trial and then down a hallway to an amphitheater, where they were executed. A report from Amnesty International found that 4,672 people were killed.
At the time, Noury was a 27-year-old assistant to the deputy prosecutor working in the prison. Through his lawyers, he has denied the charges and claims it is a case of mistaken identity.
“The Swedish police and prosecutors have gained considerable experience from previous cases which made them more confident in taking these actions,” Mark Klamberg, a professor in international law at Stockholm University who has been following the case, said in an interview.
Nearly a decade ago, in 2012, the same Stockholm court convicted Milic Martinovic and sentenced him to life in prison for his role in a 1999 massacre of 40 people in Kosovo during the Bosnian War. The special Swedish War Crimes Unit has around 50 active investigations at present, mostly against Syrians.
Victims and their families have played a big role in bringing the prosecution. One man, Iraj Mesdaghi, who details his experiences in Gohardasht Prison in his memoir "Living in the Death Corridor," helped to compile a several thousand-page dossier on Noury that was presented to Swedish prosecutors. Now a naturalized Swedish citizen, Mesdaghi is expecting to testify against his former captor.
Prosecutors opened proceedings Tuesday by reading aloud the names of over 100 people whose death Noury is accused of helping to carry out. The court expects the trial to last until April 2022.
The trial has brought hope to the Iranian diaspora around the world, many of whom fled the regime after the revolution.
“People are extremely excited,” human rights lawyer Kaveh Moussavi said in an interview. Moussavi was also involved in presenting some 30 complaints about Noury to the Swedish authorities.
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