The last time Iraj Mesdaghi saw Hamid Noury was in 1991 in the corridors of the notorious Evin prison, located in northern Tehran. The first was serving his ten-year sentence for having belonged to the People’s Mojahedin, an opposition party described as Islamo-Marxist. Hamid Noury was dadyar, the equivalent of a seconded prosecutor inside prisons. In this capacity, he would have supervised the tortures and executions of many opponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1988.
The two men met again on November 13, 2019, in Sweden, in a court in Stockholm: Hamid Noury arrived in handcuffs. He hid his trembling hands under the desk behind which he had sat. His gaze met that of Iraj Mesdaghi who was watching him through a window. “That day, Noury was completely shocked. He saw me and recognized me right away,” explains Iraj Mesdaghi, met in Stockholm where he has lived in exile since 1994.
Hamid Noury, 61, bearded and skinny, has been on trial since August 2021 in Stockholm for “aggravated felony, crime against international law and murder” for acts that took place in Iran. He appeared during three hearings a week in court. The last was to be held on May 4. The prosecution requested a life sentence. The verdict is expected within a few weeks.
His arrest dates back to November 2019. Hamid Noury had boarded a Tehran-Stockholm flight, as he often did. The man planned to travel to the Scandinavian islands and then to Barcelona and Milan, where he was supposed to catch a return flight to Tehran. He did not know that Iraj Mesdaghi, accompanied by two other former political prisoners, had lodged a complaint against him, in Sweden, a country which, by virtue of its universal jurisdiction, can receive and investigate such a complaint.
First Iranian official tried abroad
The trial of Hamid Noury is a historic event, as he is the first Iranian official to be tried abroad for a dark episode in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran when, in the summer of 1988, thousands of prisoners politicians were killed. Some a few days before their release.
This summer of 1988, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, was forced to accept the ceasefire proposed by the United Nations, ending eight years of war with Iraq (1980-1988). The Iranian People’s Mojahedin Organization, having distanced itself from the Islamic Republic of Iran shortly after the revolution in 1979, had since settled in Iraq, under the protection of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
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