Iran warns of "political and legal" responses to Sweden for the conviction of an Iranian for the execution of opponents

MADRID, 3 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Naser Kanani, warned this Saturday of "political and legal" measures against Sweden for the life sentence imposed on the former Iranian political leader Hamid Nuri for the mass executions and torture of opponents in 1988 in a prison in the city of Karaj.

Kanani has called for Nuri's release, calling his imprisonment "illegal" and saying the trial is based on "baseless accusations", according to the Iranian news agency IRNA.

Nuri's imprisonment is "totally unacceptable", according to Kanani, who has also called for the release of Iranian Asadollah Assadi, an Iranian citizen imprisoned in Belgium. Assadi is an Iranian diplomat accused of being involved in a plan to attack France during an act of the opposition People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), banned in Iran.

Kanani has also taken the opportunity to defend the shift in Iranian foreign policy called Looking at Asia promoted by President Ebrahim Raisi.

Nuri's case has caused an increase in bilateral tension between Sweden and Iran and Tehran announced last Wednesday the call for consultations of its ambassador in Stockholm.

Nuri was arrested in the European country in November 2019, after which a trial was opened against him in 2021 for his role in the killing of thousands of people.

The executions were carried out following a secret edict issued by the then great leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeini, after an armed incursion into Iran by the PMOI, an opposition group based in Iraq and banned by the authorities. Iranians, according to the report published by Amnesty in 2018.

Khomeini's order came in the last phases of the war between Iran and Iraq (1980-1988), in which the PMOI, which actively participated in the revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlevi with an Islamist discourse mixed with an adaptation of the Marxist ideology, he fought on the side of Saddam Hussein's regime after denouncing the actions of the religious leadership established by the ayatollahs.

The group was persecuted by the religious authorities established in Iran, which led the then leader of the group, Masud Rajavi, to reach a pact with Hussein in 1986 in the midst of the war between the two, which led Iran to the supreme leader of Iran to order the execution of alleged members and sympathizers of the organization.