The Swedish Supreme Court announced through a press release its rejection of Hamid Noury’s appeal. This final decision upholds his life sentence imposed by the Stockholm regional appeals court last year.
Noury, a former assistant prosecutor at Gohardasht Prison (Rajai Shahr), stood accused of two crimes: international war crimes and murder related to the 1988 execution of political prisoners in Iran. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, along with compensation awarded to survivors.
Noury maintained his innocence throughout the process, denying involvement and labeling the executions themselves as fabricated. The Iranian regime also echoed these claims, asserting his innocence and portraying the court proceedings as politically motivated.
However, the court found Noury culpable in the executions. During the summer of 1988, thousands of political prisoners were executed and buried in mass graves under the orders of the regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini.
This two-month period witnessed the systematic elimination of prisoners who had already undergone trials and were serving sentences.
Even those who had completed their sentences were not spared. Notably, over 90% of the victims belonged to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), other dissident groups, or were non-religious political detainees.
The regime not only denied families the right to claim the bodies of their loved ones but also actively sought to erase any trace of their existence by withholding burial locations from most families. In recent months, the families of the deceased have raised concerns about the regime’s attempts to destroy the mass graves.
Adding weight to the accusations, Hossein Ali Montazeri, the then-deputy leader of the regime, went on record at a meeting with officials, calling the 1988 executions “the biggest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic.”
While the exact number of victims remains unconfirmed, estimates and survivor testimonies suggest the figure is at least 30,000. Ebrahim Raisi, the current president of the regime, is also accused of being one of the main perpetrators behind the executions in 1988.
Who is Hamid Noury?
Noury, a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), joined the prosecutor’s office in 1982. He is accused of being the assistant to Mohammad Moghise (Nasserian) at Gohardasht Prison during the summer of 1988, the period of mass executions.
While his name appears seldom in the over 40 published books recounting the memoirs and testimonies of political prisoners from the 1980s, this is attributed to his use of the alias “Abbasi” during this period. Despite not being as prominent as other figures responsible for the 1988 executions, Noury’s involvement in specific crimes throughout the summer has been established.
