Iran withdraws its ambassador to Sweden over sentencing of former Iranian official for 1988 opposition executions

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Naser Kanani said Wednesday that in protest against the ruling issued against the former Iranian official for the mass executions and torture of opponents in 1988 in a prison in the city of Karaj, Iran has decided to recall its ambassador to Stockholm for consultations.

A court in Sweden last week sentenced former Iranian official, Hamid Nuri, to life imprisonment.

Nuri has told his family in a phone call that he is still in solitary confinement and complained that no HRD organization has visited or followed up on his case, despite his long time in solitary confinement, as reported by IRNA news agency.

The convict, Hamid 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 Swedish daily ‘Aftonbladet’ reported.

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

Khomeini’s order came in the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war (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 Marxist ideology, fought on the side of Saddam Hussein’s regime after denouncing the actions of the religious leadership installed by the ayatollahs.

The group was persecuted by the religious authorities installed in Iran, which led the then leader of the group, Masud Rajavi, to reach in 1986 a pact with Hussein in the middle 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.