77th Session of the Nouri Court; Witness: Claims of Legality of Executions Are "Absolute Lies"

The 77th trial session of Hamid Nouri, accused of participating in the execution of political prisoners in the summer of 2018, was held in Gohardasht Prison on Wednesday, April 2, 2022, with the presence of two expert witnesses, Toron Lindholm, professor of social psychology and deputy head of the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University, and Shadi Sadr, lawyer and one of the directors of the Justice for Iran Organization.

Toron Lindholm explained that since 1993 he has been researching the psychology of witnesses, the memory of prisoners who have been abused, the degree of credibility and consistency of individual testimonies, and the factors influencing the testimonies and characteristics of torturers and assailants. He emphasized several times during his testimony that one of the most important sources and contexts for his and his colleagues' research was World War II and the Nazi crimes against Jews and concentration camps. The witness mentioned the following important points in his statement:

• Humans are very capable and intelligent in remembering events, and the most important factor in the remembering process is observation, and primarily "faces."
• When meeting and confronting others, people focus more on the individual than on their surroundings.
• Women's minds and facial expressions are better compared to men.
• Individuals' ability to remember varies, but overall, individuals have a better and greater ability to identify people of their own race and ethnicity.

Thoren Lindholm explained the coding of the human mind and the impact of trauma or crisis on it:

• The focus of the individual [prisoner] in a traumatic situation is on the focus of that trauma.
• The person can remember the events, the external environment, and the emotional effects associated with that trauma.

Thoren Lindholm said about post-traumatic stress:

• The memory of a trauma is involuntarily stored in a person's memory and the person remembers it unintentionally.
• The occurrence of events repeatedly and serially leads to their recall and repetition, and in some cases, the combination and integration of events in a person's mind.

Thoren Lindholm said that in the event of vision loss or blindness:

• The individual's perception and recording of the environment becomes better and more accurate.
• The extent and credibility of blindfolded narrations depends on the extent of the party's possible vision through the blindfold.

Thoren Lindholm emphasized that recounting memories and trauma to others helps the witness better remember it. He said that the way a person is questioned has a direct impact on the mechanism of remembering events.

Thoren Lindholm explained that while researching World War II POW camps, he found that people often remember the date of their transfer and entry into the camps well, but they may be wrong about the time their friend or fellow inmate was killed or died.

In response to the defendant's defense attorneys, Toron Lindholm said time is important in narratives and can make a difference in witness accounts of a particular incident - right after it happened and two weeks later.

The defense attorney asked the witness to what extent prior knowledge of witnesses influenced their words and testimony. The witness replied that a study conducted forty years after the Nuremberg Trials had shown that the broadcast of a person's testimony in court and the showing of his [or her] image had influenced the testimony of subsequent witnesses. On the other hand, the same study found that 60 percent of those who had not seen the broadcast of the hearing also remembered the person and identified him.

Toron Lindholm answered in the affirmative when asked whether showing a witness a picture and asking him to testify against the person in question could influence the witness's testimony.

Shadi Sadr, a lawyer and co-founder of the Justice for Iran organization, was the next witness in the trial. She said that since 1999, she had been representing various human rights cases, especially the case of female prisoners sentenced to stoning, and that she did not have detailed information about the executions of the summer of 1988. She said that in 2010, after the Justice for Iran organization began its work, she began investigating sexual torture and gender-based violence against female political prisoners in the 1960s.

Shadi Sadr confirmed the authenticity of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa based on available evidence, especially what he considered to be "detailed" explanations by Ayatollah Montazeri in his book.

Shadi Sadr cited the “remains of the executed in mass graves” as the most important evidence of the crimes committed by the Islamic Republic in 1988. He spoke of eyewitnesses who saw the bodies of the buried with their own eyes. He said: “Unfortunately, the Islamic Republic has not even allowed any independent human rights group to approach the sites of the mass graves. Let alone be allowed to dig them up and identify the buried.”

In his testimony, Shadi Sadr spoke about several joint reports by Justice for Iran and Amnesty International, including "Blood-Drenched Secrets" and "Hiding Crimes" about the killings and identifying and reporting on the destruction of mass graves. He emphasized that before and after the aforementioned reports, other reports were prepared by various human rights organizations.

Shadi Sadr said that a joint investigation by Justice for Iran and Amnesty International into twenty-three prisons and about sixty mass graves of executed persons throughout Iran conclusively shows that prisoners were secretly and collectively executed in all of these prisons during the summer of 1988.

Shadi Sadr said that these executions were pre-planned and widespread, and that most of the executed prisoners had been arrested and sentenced in the early 1980s in the revolutionary courts. Some of them were serving their sentences, and some had even completed their sentences.

Shadi Sadr said that he believes one of the characteristics of the “Blood-Drenched Secrets” report compared to other reports on this subject is its “comprehensiveness.” He said: “Before this report, which was published on the thirtieth anniversary of the executions of the summer of 1988, no other international human rights organization had published an investigative report on this massacre.”

He said that given Amnesty International's special international credibility, the report was crucial for any action – legal and quasi-legal – in the area of ​​this crime. He mentioned the "legal analysis" included at the end of the report as another feature.

Regarding the legal decision-making based on Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa regarding the executions in Gohardasht Prison in the summer of 1988, Shadi Sadr declared: "The claim that the death sentences of political prisoners in the 1988 massacre went to the Supreme Court through a judicial process and were carried out after approval is a complete lie." He said that the executions were completely outside the framework of even the existing structure of the revolutionary courts and prosecutors.

Shadi Sadr testified that Hassan Golzari and Majid Sahebjam were two political prisoners who, in their interviews in 2017, directly and specifically mentioned “Hamid Abbasi” as someone they encountered in “Gohardasht” prison. Hassan Golzari had said in his interview that “Hamid Abbasi” questioned him and ordered him to write a letter of disgust and be flogged by the IRGC. He testified that other than these two, no other prisoner had mentioned “Hamid Abbasi” in any other prison.

However, elsewhere, Shadi Sadr provided explanations for some interviewees' reference to Abbasi's treatment in prisons other than Gohardasht Prison. He said that they had prepared a chart and timeline of Hamid Abbasi's professional life, and this chart was consistent with the timeline of Lashkari and Naserian's professional lives.

Shadi Sadr said that based on this, “we know that Hamid Abbasi worked as Naserian’s assistant, the prison prosecutor, in Evin Prison until 2015. Between 2015 and 2016 – for a period – he worked in Qezl-Hesar Prison and then was transferred to Gohardasht Prison. Therefore, there are prisoners who may have seen Hamid Abbasi in Qezl-Hesar, Evin, or Gohardasht prisons. Some may have mentioned that Hamid Abbasi was transferred from Qezl-Hesar Prison to Gohardasht with Naserian.”

One of the important parts of Shadi Sadr's testimony today was about the importance of conducting more than fifty interviews with some of the families and prisoners of the People's Mojahedin Organization who survived executions in provincial prisons and who now live in Albania, the headquarters of the People's Mojahedin Organization. These interviews were conducted in Tirana, Albania, where these individuals resided in 2017.

Shadi Sadr said that Justice for Iran interviewed more than fifty political prisoners in Albania before launching a joint investigation with Amnesty International. He explained the reason for the interviews: “There was little information about executions in the counties, and we tried to fill this gap with our investigation.”

Shadi Sadr explained that in 2018, most of the political prisoners in many small towns had been released, and a small number remained in prisons, the vast majority of whom were members of the People's Mojahedin Organization and were executed. Of the survivors, some were living in small towns in Iran, where it was not possible to reach them due to security issues. A number of [survivors] also lived in Albania, and their testimony was necessary and important in order to obtain information.

Shadi Sadr said he personally compiled a list of potential interviewees. Amnesty International contacted the MEK’s public relations office at the UN headquarters in London and provided them with the list. They were finally informed in October 2017 that interviews were possible.

Shadi Sadr explained that the interviewing method was based on the UN-approved Istanbul Protocol and other common rules for such human rights interviews, with the only difference being the location of the interviews. He said that the interviews conducted in Europe and North America were conducted in the witness’s home, but in Albania all interviews were conducted in a closed room in the interviewers’ hotel or behind closed doors in a restaurant near their residence. He said that in the Tirana interviews in Albania, no MEK officials were present and the witness was alone. The interviews were filmed and the footage is available and in some cases has been handed over to the prosecution upon request.

In response to Nouri’s defense lawyer’s question about why the three lists of interviews were not included in the indictment, he said that the responsibility for this issue lies with the [Swedish] prosecution. He said that his interrogation took place in February 2020 and that he personally emailed List A to the prosecution and Ms. Gita (one of the lawyers advising some of the plaintiffs in the case) in December 2019, two months before his interrogation. He said: “At least two months before my interrogation, I myself informed the prosecution in writing that among those we interviewed, at least two people named Hamid Abbasi were in Gohardasht Prison and at the time of the 1967 massacre.”

Shadi Sadr testified that an investigation into the events in prisons in the cities in the summer of 2018 shows that only supporters and members of the People's Mojahedin Organization were executed in the cities. He said that the investigation also shows that in 2018, there were cases of executions of leftist prisoners and supporters of Kurdish groups in prisons other than Gohardasht Prison in Tehran.

When asked whether he had made any comments about the defendant after his arrest, Shadi Sadr said that he had never participated in any interviews or made any other comments about the witness, except for two tweets he posted about Hamid Nouri's identity as "Hamid Abbasi." He said that at the time of the tweets, he had been a witness in the court process before he became active.

The continuation of Shadi Sadr's testimony has been postponed to tomorrow, Thursday, April 21, 2021. Tomorrow's session will be held with a total of three witnesses present.

Source: Voice of America