Suspect in Iran 1988 mass executions to be tried in Sweden in June

An Iranian who was arrested in Sweden in 2019 on suspicion of carrying out crimes against humanity in the 1980s in Iran will be tried in June, according to one of the plaintiffs in the case.

“The trial of Hamid Nouri will be held on June 8. This is the biggest court case in Sweden’s history,” Iraj Mesdaghi, former political prisoner and one of the plaintiffs in the case, tweeted on Wednesday.

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Mesdaghi added that he will appear in court as the first plaintiff on June 22 and June 24.

This would be the first trial ever for an alleged perpetrator of Iran’s mass executions of political prisoners in the summer of 1988.

Nouri’s arrest has been extended several times since he was detained at an airport in Stockholm in November 2019.

He was allegedly a member of what came to be known as the “death committee,” a group of Iranian judiciary and security officials put together by former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini in 1988.

The committee oversaw the mass executions of thousands of political prisoners – mostly leftists and members of dissident group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) – at the time. Several members of the committee hold key positions in Iran today, such as Ebrahim Raisi, who heads the judiciary and is often viewed as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

As many as 5,000 people were executed, according to international rights groups. MEK puts the number at 30,000.

Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions.

Read more:

Sweden arrests Iranian suspect in 1988 crimes against humanity case

Khamenei defends Iran’s 1980s political executions that killed thousands

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