Iranian prosecutor arrested over 1980s mass executions

An Iranian suspected of sending thousands of people to their deaths in a mass purge of dissidents in the 1980s has been arrested by Swedish police.

Hamid Nouri, 58, was not named by the Swedish authorities but has been widely identified by Iranian exiles, opposition media and lawyers and activists who say that they spent years trying to bring him to justice. He was detained at Stockholm airport on Saturday as he arrived to visit relatives.

He is accused of being part of a team of prosecutors in the trials and executions of members of the dissident People’s Mohajedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), an opposition faction that fought on the side of Iraq in the 1980s Gulf war. As the war came to an end, the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader, put thousands of inmates in prisons across Iran to death in a matter of weeks.

The PMOI has always claimed that 30,000 people were hanged, although human rights groups put the estimate at more than 5000.

Nouri’s arrest was carried out under the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity, Kaveh Moussavi, a UKbased lawyer who helped to pursue Nouri and drew up the case against him, said. He was ordered by a district court in Stockholm to be detained pending formal charges until December 11 at the latest.

Lars Hultgren, Nouri’s lawyer, told journalists in Sweden that Nouri was claiming a case of mistaken identity. However, Moussavi

UK-based lawyer

‘‘Hearing the cries of the survivors, the parents, the children is gut-wrenching. I want their cries to be heard.’’

Kaveh Moussavi

said he had shown photographs of the arrested man to former dissidents who had been incarcerated by him and in at least one case tortured by him.

He had played a voice recording of the man to the mother of one victim, who broke down in tears on hearing it.

She said she recognised it immediately as the voice of the man who summoned her to prison to pick up her son’s belongings after he was hanged.

Other people, Moussavi said, had contacted him since Persianlanguage media posted the passport page of the man arrested.

‘‘I have no doubt that this is Hamid Nouri,’’ he said. ‘‘I have 16 people in the European Union willing to give evidence against him.’’

He said that talking to former inmates and their families about Nouri was an ‘‘emotionally draining experience’’.

‘‘Hearing the cries of the survivors, the parents, the children is gut-wrenching,’’ he said. ‘‘I want their cries to be heard.’’