In an announcement on Monday, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanaani, stated that Iran will continue efforts to secure the release of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian official. Nouri’s conviction and life sentence for human rights abuses in Sweden was upheld last week by the Svea Court of Appeal.
According to Kanaani, the Iranian government sees the verdict against Nouri as “illegal” and “cruel”. He also stated that their pursuit for Nouri’s release will continue. In addition to this, the head of the Iranian Parliament’s Human Rights Committee, Zohreh Elahian, disclosed to IRNA, an Iranian state news media outlet, that a complaint will be filed with the International Criminal Court by Nouri’s family, seeking his release.
Elahian further claimed that Nouri has been kept in solitary confinement for 50 months and that false testimonies were presented at his trial. It is noteworthy that Sweden, in the past, received criticism from the UN Committee against Torture over the excessive use of solitary confinement in its prison system. (UNRIC).
Nouri was arrested in a Swedish airport in November 2019 due to his alleged involvement in a series of prison massacres in Iran in 1988. A 2018 Amnesty International report noted that during this period, thousands of political dissidents and activists were killed in Iranian prisons and their bodies dumped in unmarked graves; some of which are yet to be discovered. This was reportedly under the orders of multiple officials who are still in power, including the current Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
There are also concerns that Iran may use the detention of two Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus and Ahmadreza Djalali, as leverage to ease Nouri’s release. Iran has a history of prisoner exchange as demonstrated in the release of Belgian aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, in exchange for Iranian official Assadolah Assadi, as well as an exchange deal with US prisoners for the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets.
Floderus, detained since 2022, has been accused by Iran of being a “proxy agent of the Zionist regime” and a key part of a Jewish conspiracy to spy on Iran. On the other hand, Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian professor, received his conviction in 2017 and was arrested in 2016 under charges of “corruption on earth”. He now faces the death penalty, as accused by an Iranian court. According to Amnesty International, Djalali was informed that his death sentence would be imposed shortly and allegations circulate that his arrest was a planned response for the purpose of pressuring Iran to release Djalali.