Iran Slams Sweden Trial Of Former Prison Official, Denies Link To Condemned Academic

Speaking at a weekly press conference in Tehran Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Sweden had “no jurisdiction” in the case and that the defendant’s “basic rights” had not been respected.

Khatibzadeh denied any connection between Nouri and the case of Swedish-Iranian doctor and academic Ahmadreza Djalali (Jalali), whose death sentence after an espionage conviction was recently reaffirmed six years after his arrest.

A verdict in the Nouri’s trial, which recently concluded, is due in July. He was arrested in 2019 on arrival at Stockholm airport, with his trial beginning August 202l over his alleged role in executions in Gohardasht prison, near Tehran in Iran in July- August 1988.

Khatibzadeh said the Nouri trial was a trap set by the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), an Iranian opposition group. “It is suspicious why the Swedish government is allowing this,” he noted.

MEK members have acted as witnesses, with the court adjourning some sessions to Albania, where the MEK was relocated from Iraq by the United States in 2016. The bulk of victims in 1988 were MEK members or supporters. Both Tehran and Washington have denied that reported talks over a potential prisoner exchange are linked to efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.