Seventy-Second Session of Hamid Nouri Court; Judge Rejects Proposal to Add ‘Genocide’ Charge

The seventy-second hearing session in the case of Hamid Nouri, accused of participating in the execution of political prisoners at Gohardasht Prison in the summer of 1988, was held on Wednesday, March 9, 2022, in Stockholm, Sweden.

The second session of the second round of the defendant’s defense focused on a detailed account of the case presented by Hamid Nouri’s defense team. Daniel Markus and Thomas Söderqvist, Nouri’s defense attorneys, continued their key strategy in this session as well. By supplementing previously submitted documents, they attempted to highlight discrepancies between the testimony of some witnesses in court and their previously recorded statements in reports by international organizations and other human rights bodies such as the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation and Justice for Iran. All of these testimonies were given in the years prior to Hamid Nouri’s arrest in Sweden.

Hamid Nouri’s defense attorneys addressed details from the accounts of individuals such as Esmat Talebi, Mokhtar Shalalvand, Vida Rostami, and Laleh Bazargan, explaining discrepancies in the timing, location, and method of prisoner executions to the court members.

Hamid Nouri’s defense attorneys questioned the credibility of individuals such as Asghar Mehdi Zadeh, Mohammad Khodabandeh, Hossein Maleki, and Manouchehr Eshaqi, and emphasized that the name Abbasi was not added in the past but rather after his arrest, according to these individuals’ accounts. Other witness names brought up in today’s session by the defendant’s attorneys include Hossein Farsi, Mohammad Khodabandeh, Hossein Maleki, Rahman Dargashvand, and Amirhosang Atiyabi.

Hamid Nouri’s defense attorneys also explained that Mehdi Asalani, one of the witnesses in this case, testified that Hamid Abbasi called him and several other prisoners on the sixth of Shahrivar 1367 (August 28, 1988) and brought them before the death committee. Nouri’s attorney stated that, however, when Mehdi Asalani recounted this same memory in his book “The Raven and the Red Flower,” he referred to a guard and Nasserian instead of Abbasi.

During the defense attorneys’ presentation of new evidence and explanations, the prosecutor objected several times. He stated that these points should be included in the defendant’s final defense statement and that today was only for presenting documents, not analyzing their content.

Another part of today’s defense hearing for Hamid Nouri was devoted to the continuation of cross-examination of Rahman Dargashvand by the defendant’s defense attorneys. Dargashvand is a political prisoner who survived the executions and is one of the witnesses in this case.

Rahman Dargashvand participated in the court for the second time via video from the Netherlands. In his initial cross-examination in court, he testified that he had been a childhood friend and neighbor of the defendant and his family in Tehran.

In this session, Rahman Dargashvand repeatedly pointed out that the defendant’s defense attorneys’ questions were repetitive. He reiterated and confirmed his testimony that in 1983, while blindfolded, he was confronted with and questioned by someone at the prosecutor’s office, who was identified by the witness based on his questions despite his attempts not to be recognized. He was none other than the defendant’s childhood neighbor, Hamid Nouri!

The session concluded with an important announcement by Thomas Sander, the court judge. He announced that in the court’s opinion, the case of Hamid Nouri has no connection to genocide. He stated that the legal evidence necessary to issue a conviction for genocide does not exist in this case; therefore, Kent Louis’s request is rejected. Kent Louis had previously requested that the charge of genocide be added to Hamid Nouri’s other charges based on Judge Geoffrey Robertson’s report. The judge announced that the court’s ruling rejecting the “genocide” charge is final and there is no right of appeal in this matter.

Hamid Nouri has been on trial for seven months on two charges of war crimes and premeditated murder in a Swedish court. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment.

It is worth noting that this court session was also accompanied by considerable controversy. Mohammad Reza Neili, Consul General of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s embassy in Stockholm, along with his colleague Alauddin Erhan Mirmohammadi, reacted to the slogans “Death to the Islamic Republic,” “Curse to Khomeini,” and “Mercenary, get lost” chanted by attendees and protesters in front of the court building.

Mohammad Reza Neili requested that Swedish police force the protesters in the court building to be silent, but was met with a refusal.

Mohammad Reza Neili had previously insulted Giso Shakeri, an artist residing in Stockholm, using vulgar and sexualized language in front of those present in the court corridor when she asked him why he was filming her.