Iranian national Hamid Noury, 60, is on trial for “committing grave war crimes and murder in Iran during 1988,” Swedish prosecutors announced on July 27.
Noury had served as assistant to the deputy governor of Gohardasht prison in Karaj, near the Iranian capital of Tehran, when an estimated 5,000 prisoners were killed across the country, following an order from then Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
On July 26, 1988 thousands of fighters with the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that sided with Saddam Hussein’s regime in the Iran-Iraq war, crossed the border into Iran with the support of Iraq’s air force for Operation Mersad, the last major offensive of the conflict before a United Nations ceasefire came into effect.
The Iranian government put prisons across the country on lockdown, and soon rumors spread around the country of prisoners killed and their bodies dumped into mass graves. Those killed had been jailed for their opposition to the Iranian regime, including followers of MEK.
Damning evidence of the crime was leaked in the form a sound recording of a meeting between Islamic Republic officials released in 2016 by family members of the late Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who at the time of the recording served as deputy to Khomeini.
“As I see it, this is the biggest crime in the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us,” Montazeri said in the recording from 1988. A year later, after Khomeini’s death, Montazeri, who was considered successor to the supreme leader, was prevented from taking the position and it was handed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Tuesday, family members of the victims and rights activists gathered in front of the Stockholm courthouse where Noury will be tried in what prosecutors believe is the first trial of its kind for someone accused in the mass killings.
“I am very happy to have come here today. We want justice and for the truth to be revealed about what happened to our loved ones. As a sister I don’t know exactly when they executed my brother, what happened to his corpse and on what charges and why was he was executed. It is not only my brother, the victims of the Islamic Republic are in their thousands,” Nazila Toubaei told Rudaw English.
Her brother Siamak Toubaei was arrested in 1981 at the age of 18 when he was in his last year of high school. He was accused of supporting the Mujahedin and was sentenced to 12 years in jail. He survived the 1988 massacre, but fled prison the following year and was tracked down and killed.
“The crime of Hamid Noury is not specific to 1988. Hamid Noury started working at Evin and Gohardasht prisons from 1981 and tortured and killed prisoners. In the 1988 massacre, he had a critical role, but he continued after that too,” Nazila said.
“So when my brother fled prison, Hamid Noury and his boss Naserian and Mohammad Moghisi raided our house and detained my father and mother on trumped up charges of helping Siamak to escape and imprisoned them.… Then they detained my brother at home and Hamid Noury had an active role in this,” she said.
“Hamid Noury is one, but not the only. They had orders from a group, one of whom is Ebrahim Raisi, who is the president of the Islamic republic of Iran today,” Nazila said. “The criminals in Iran should know that while the world is big, it is small for them and they can’t escape and they will all be arrested. The day will arrive when they will have to answer for their crimes in front of the people of Iran.”
Newly inaugurated Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is also accused of playing a role in the prison murders. In 1988, he was a member of a “death commission” that oversaw the extrajudicial executions. He was deputy prosecutor general of Tehran at the time.
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard in late June.
On several occasions, Raisi has denied involvement in the crimes. However he has paid “tribute” to Khomeini’s “order” to carry out the purge.
Observers believe the trial of Noury will become a major challenge for Raisi’s brand new cabinet.
“This trial process could go up to April 2022, and I believe that it will become one of the biggest challenges in front of Ebrahim Raisi’s foreign policy, as he himself was part of the commission titled ‘death commission’,” Rebin Rahmani, founder of the Paris based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) told Rudaw English from Stockholm.
Others wish the trial was taking place in Iran.
“We had hoped that this court would be established in Iran because finding out the truth is the right of people of Iran because the executions of 1988 were the continuation of the executions that started the day after the revolution,” Reza Moeini, head of the Iran and Afghanistan desk for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told Rudaw English.
“I have always said that the mass execution of summer of 1988 started in Kurdistan and in Paveh and Sanandaj where mass executions took place. Those executions were no different to these ones [in 1988],” he added. “What we want is finding the truth and delivering justice. We hope that justice is done. Without a doubt it will have an impact on other countries and can become a judicial process used in other courts across the world.”
Human Rights Watch described the trial as a milestone in a report published on Monday.
“This milestone trial in Sweden comes after decades of persistence by Iranian families and victims of the 1988 mass executions,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at the human rights monitor. “This case moves victims closer to justice for the crimes committed more than 30 years ago.”
The MEK official website on Tuesday said that at the beginning of the trial more than 300 supporters of the MEK and relatives of the victims were present in front of the courthouse.
