Lawyer: Sweden’s Trial Staged Against Iranian Citizen

TEHRAN -- A lawyer of Iranian national Hamid Nouri, who has been illegally jailed for years in solitary confinement in Sweden on bogus allegations, has lashed out at the show trial staged against his client, insisting that the Swedish has no legal jurisdiction over a case that has nothing to do with the European country.

“This is a very strange case,” said Thomas Bodstrom in an exclusive interview with Press TV on the case staged against his 62-year-old client, emphasizing: I cannot understand why we should have a trial in Sweden about what had happened in another country 35 years ago for a person who is not a Swedish person.”

He said some of the witnesses introduced against the defendant have had conflict of interests in the case, underlining that Nouri should be acquitted despite the purported “evidence” propped up against him.
Nouri’s attorney also blasted the Swedish judiciary for brutally holding his client in solitary confinement for over 40 months and not allowing him to have regular family visits in violation of its own laws, insisting that his client is entitled by law to have in-person visitations.
“What I am most upset about it is that he is almost isolated 24 hours a day and now he has been there for more than three and a half years. This would be his fourth summer in custody,” Bodstrom said.
The “worst” part, he said, is that Nouri is isolated in a seven-square-meter jail and is “treated very badly.”
Nouri has now spent more than three-and-half-years in solitary confinement which is a “record” in Sweden, he added.
Bodstrom additionally noted that Nouri had also been denied valuable documents essential for his defense due to what the court claims to be “erased by mistake.”
He also noted that Nouri’s lawyers have on many occasions complained about the way he is being treated in jail “but nothing happened.”
Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official, was arrested upon arrival at Stockholm Airport in November 2019 and was immediately imprisoned. He was put on trial on unfounded allegations staged against him by elements representing the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group that has openly boasted about carrying out terrorist operations against Iranian officials and civilians perceived to be supporters of the government.
It has claimed responsibility for the murder of over 17,000 Iranians. It use to be internationally recognized as a terrorist group but Western politicians pushed for the

 

MKO’s removal from the list of terrorist group based on their anti-Iran and Islamophobic tendencies. 

The MKO also collaborated with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in staging an 8-year war of aggression against Iran and its members took part in waging a cross-border offensive against Iran from Iraq after the Iraqi dictator had agreed to a UN-mediated deal to end the war. Iranian forces at the time inflicted a devastating blow to the terrorist incursion and killed most of their armed elements.

The terrorist group had falsely claimed that Nouri was involved in the execution and torture of MKO members in 1988, but he has vehemently rejected the baseless allegations.

Last July, a Swedish court sentenced Nouri to life imprisonment. The court, which was described by Iran as illegitimate in the first place, convicted Nouri of “war crimes and crimes against humanity” entirely based on claims made by MKO terrorists living in exile across Europe.

He has been placed in solitary confinement since his illegal arrest.

During the first session of the court of appeal, which was held at Svea Court of Appeal in the Swedish capital Stockholm in January, Nouri insisted that his trial has not been fair, a statement that prompted the judge to shut off his microphone.

“I consider this court unjust and will not attend the court as long as my problems are not addressed,” he said at the beginning of the session as he was protesting the court for not allowing him to consult with his lawyers before the start of the session.