Iran summons Swedish envoy over ex-official’s trial

Iran stated it had summoned Sweden’s ambassador following a request with the aid of prosecutors in the Nordic country for the existence imprisonment of a former Iranian reliable.

The overseas ministry in Tehran’s past due Sunday “strongly condemned” the arrest and trial of Hamid Noury, 61, as “unlawful” and referred to as for halting the lawsuits and for his release.

Noury, who has been on trial in Stockholm since last August, faces charges including crimes against humanity and war crimes for being involved in what the court heard were the executions of a large number of prisoners in the 1980s.

Lawyers for Noury, who was arrested at Stockholm airport in November 2019, have denied he was present for the alleged killings.

The prosecution said the prisoners were members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an exiled opposition organization that Tehran considers a “terrorist group” and has banned since 1981.

The MEK were initially supporters of the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that ousted the shah. But it rapidly fell out with Tehran, backed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, and was blamed for a string of attacks in the early 1980s.

Swedish ambassador Mattias Lentz was summoned following a trial session Thursday when prosecutors requested the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for Noury.

The overseas ministry of Sweden in a Twitter submission counseled its residents against non-critical travel to the Islamic republic “due to the safety situation”.

Swedish courts try Noury beneath the precept of regular jurisdiction which allows them to handle extreme instances including conflict crimes irrespective of in which the offenses were dedicated.