Stockholm, Aug.5 (DP.net).– The Abdorraham Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran welcomed last July 15th., the Swedish District Court’s guilty verdict of former Iranian official, Hamid Nouri, who was convicted of war crimes and murder related to the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran.
The Court found that from July to November 1988, thousands of political prisoners across Iran were brought before "Death Committees" and many were executed without a fair trial. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center reported that the government attempted to cover up the murders and banned the families of victims from mourning when they were informed of the executions months later.
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“The arrest and trial for the events of summer 1988 has been established as legal evidence in an international court, and has taken the justice-seeking movement forward a fundamental step… This was not considered the trial of an individual agent active in the massacre, but the trial of the entire regime, especially its judicial system…” Hossein Maleki, July 13, 2022, Stockholm, Sweden |
As knowledge of the massacre entered the mainstream in the 2010s, civil society organizations and UN human rights rapporteurs called for justice to be brought to the survivors and families of the victims. In November 2019, Swedish authorities arrested Hamid Nouri, a former assistant to a prison prosecutor during the 1988 executions, and charged him with war crimes and murder. On July 14th of this year, Nouri was given two life sentences for each crime. While welcoming this development, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center emphasizes in their report that this should be just the first step in holding those involved in the massacre accountable for their actions.
Iran denied the facts presented in court in a statement of the Islamic Republic Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanani. who said: "Iran is absolutely certain that Nouri's sentence was politically motivated and it has no legal validity." Furthermore, religious judge and member of the "execution panels" Hossein Nayeri declared from Tehran that “we couldn’t manage the country through pleasantries. If it hadn’t been for [Khomeini’s] resolution, we might not have had this security… The regime might not have even survived”, thus implying that summary executions were necessary.
[ Full report ]