The Stockholm District Court sentenced former Iranian jailer Hamid Nouri to life in prison for mass executions of opposition prisoners in 1988. This writes the Russian service of the BBC.

The laws of Sweden make it possible to try for murders and crimes against humanity, wherever they were committed.

Iranian political emigrants collected materials on Nuri. On November 9, 2019, upon arriving in Sweden to resolve his adopted daughter's family disputes, he was arrested by the Swedish security forces.

We are talking about the mass executions of 1988, which are believed to have been involved in the current Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, known in the country as the “executioner of 1988”.

The victims were members of the left-wing group "Mujahideen of the People". They carried out several terrorist attacks in Iran, and in response, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the execution of the "mujahideen of the people" who were in prison. These people certainly could not be involved in the attacks, since at that time they were in prisons, respectively, they were killed simply for their views.

Cases were considered by a specially created temporary body of four people, nicknamed the "committee of death" and with its methods reminiscent of Stalin's "troikas". Sentences were passed in secret, in the absence of the defendants and without the right to defense and appeal. The fate of a person was decided in a few minutes. The exact number of those killed is unknown, human rights activists say about five thousand.

Nuri, now 61, was then an assistant to the deputy prosecutor of the Goshardasht prison. According to the investigation, Nuri carried out some of the sentences himself.

Nuri's trial, which began last summer, was the world's first trial in this case. The Iranian himself denies the allegations. At the trial, his lawyer said that they are based mainly on testimonies, and more than thirty years after the events, memory can fail.