Sweden released an Iranian war criminal. Here’s how activists and rights defenders reacted.

On June 15, Sweden released convicted war criminal Hamid Noury and repatriated him to Iran in exchange for the freedom of European diplomat Johan Floderus and a second Swedish citizen, Saeed Azizi, both of whom were arrested in Iran on bogus “national security” charges.

In 2022, a Stockholm court sentenced Noury, an Iranian official, to life in prison for his role in the 1988 prison massacre. According to Amnesty International, between July and September 1988, the Islamic Republic “forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed thousands of imprisoned political dissidents in secret and dumped their bodies, mostly in unmarked mass graves.”

Amnesty International had celebrated Noury’s sentencing, calling it an “unprecedented step towards justice for crimes committed in Iran” and saying it sent an “unequivocal, and long overdue, message to the Iranian authorities that those responsible for crimes against humanity in Iran will not escape justice.” But Noury has escaped justice—at least for now.

Taking hostages has been the Islamic Republic’s vehicle of choice for exfiltrating its agents of terror arrested in Europe and elsewhere. In 2022, BBC Persian’s lead investigative journalist, Hossein Bastani, produced an in-depth report titled “Exfiltrating Regime Agents from Europe.” The report detailed how the Islamic Republic and its proxies wreaked havoc across Europe, and manipulated presidential candidates and election results in France, to strong-arm European governments and secure the release of agents responsible for the assassination of dissidents.

Reacting to Noury’s release, Bastani reshared the report, calling on Iranian activists to revise how they perceive Western powers’ “human rights redlines.”

In the eyes of the Islamic Republic, hostage deals lead to a simple conclusion: “By taking their citizens hostage, it is possible to force Western politicians to do things they claim they would never do, especially since decisions of politicians can be swayed by [public pressure and] election contests. This is while the [Western governments] are dealing with a regime whose policies in this regard are not bound by public opinion”—and it can act with absolute impunity.

Top Islamic Republic officials have never shied away from threatening the world with hostage taking. For instance, while running for president in 2021, Mohsen Rezai, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), said, “As a soldier, I vow if the United States even just look at Iran as a military target we will take hostage 1,000 Americans and they will have to pay billions of dollars for releasing each of them.”

Former hostages speak up

Barry Rosen was the press attaché at the US embassy in Tehran when Islamist militants stormed the compound on November 4, 1979. Along with dozens of other Americans, he was held hostage for 444 days until their release in January 1981. The rise of the Islamic Republic in 1979 had heralded a new age of state-sponsored terrorism, and Rosen was among its first victims.

“I refuse to call the release of Hamid Noury a ‘prisoner exchange,’” he told me. “This was an absolute disgrace, especially since the Swedish government did not push for the release of Ahmad Reza Jalali,” a Swedish-Iranian scientist who was arrested in April 2016 while visiting Iran for an academic conference. Falsely charged with espionage, Jalali has been sentenced to death.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic, was invited to a conference in Iran in 2018. When she was leaving the country, Moore-Gilbert was detained by security forces, falsely charged with espionage, and held hostage for two years until November 2020. She was released in exchange for three Iranian nationals convicted of terrorism in Thailand in connection with the 2012 Bangkok bomb plot, as part of a simultaneous terror campaign targeting Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia.

“Anyone in the Iranian opposition who continues to expect that the West will come to their aid in their quest to shake off the Islamic Republic’s decades-long repression is buying into an illusion,” Moore-Gilbert told me. “As these hostage deals have shown, the West is largely impotent in the face of the regime’s malign behavior. Iranians have nobody to rely on other than themselves.”

Rage and resilience

Those who had lost loved ones in the 1988 massacre were angered and heartbroken at the news of Nouri’s release. Others pointed out the false “moralistic” pontification of observers who censured Iranians for celebrating the death in a helicopter crash of President Ebrahim Raisi, nicknamed the “Butcher of Tehran” for his role in the mass executions of the 1980s.

“Human rights is a circus in the West, and we are the exotic clowns. Western governments will clap us on when it suits them, but when the music dies, it’s business as usual,” an Iranian woman who has dedicated the past five decades of her life to the realization of human rights in Iran told me. She preferred to remain anonymous to protect her safety.

This frustration was echoed by Fariba Balouch, a human rights defender focused on the persecution of the Baluch ethnic minority in Iran. “The Islamic Republic has been in the business of hostage taking for four decades, and the primary target has been the people in Iran,” she told me. “We have been arrested, tortured, and executed; our families taken hostage to silence us. However, we are still standing.”

Despite showing resilience in the face of oppression and threats against Balouch and her family, she also voiced frustration at the international community appeasing the Islamic Republic “through bending backward in the face of their hostage taking,” highlighting how Western powers and the United Nations even offered condolence messages for the death of President Raisi, despite his role in the 1988 massacre.

Balouch said, “The Islamic Republic’s increased hubris and impunity manifest in the plots it has hatched assassination and abduction of journalists and human rights defenders in Europe and the US.”

She warned Western powers that “if the international community does not act now, this regime’s empire of terror will affect more innocent people around the world.”

While voicing frustration, most human right defenders and legal minds working on Iran still believe in their path and the struggle.

Leading human rights lawyer Mehrangiz Kar told me, “Hamid Noury is nothing but a dead man walking. Yes, his release and repatriation have marred the face of justice. However, it was not only him who was convicted in court. Thanks to the efforts of Iranians and the independent Swedish court system, his fair trial also unveiled the Islamic Republic’s war crimes.”

While prominent Iranian human rights defender Atena Daemi told me, “This was not the first time that Western governments prioritized short-term interests over human rights and justice. This is not the first time that they have indulged in appeasement when facing the Islamic Republic’s extortion, coercion, and hostage taking. In light of this reality, the people in Iran, who are fighting for freedom, who have time and again suffered from false promises of Western governments, have realized that they should not hope for Western support for the liberation of Iran.”

The staff attorney at the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), who prefers to remain anonymous to protect their security, also believes there is no time for despair.

“The release of convicted war criminal Hamid Noury is terrible,” she said, “but we should not see it as a devastating defeat for accountability.”

She added, “Noury’s trial was a significant victory, as it established, beyond a reasonable doubt, the occurrence of war crimes by the regime for the first time. Feeling frustrated and defeated is easy but not productive. Persistence pays. We need to strategize for future cases and learn valuable lessons here.”

Frontline defender and teacher Diako Alavi, who left Iran recently after facing persecution for his involvement in the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, argues that a missing piece in overthrowing the Islamic Republic and putting an end to its terror and hostage taking is “establishing institutions that can replace the regime when it is toppled. The onus is on democratic forces that aim to topple this oppressive regime. Before that certain day arrives, we need institutions that would preserve and protect the flow of life post-Islamic Republic.”

Gissou Nia, founder and director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council, argued that it would be a mistake rooted in shortsightedness for countries to see Noury’s release as a reason not to undertake more robust accountability efforts. “They should instead invest better in the rule of law and establish mechanisms for holding hostage takers accountable,” she said. “There is a lack of understanding over what the problem is and how to best deal with it. The hostage situations are being treated as an ad hoc piecemeal problem when in reality it is part of a much larger pattern.”

Fighting the Islamic Republic is an uphill battle. Those who are on the frontlines and gaze into the darkness of this regime’s terror and oppression need to constantly fortify their spirits against both despair and false hope. Yes, world powers will continue negotiating with the Islamic Republic and make shortsighted concessions that will endanger not only the future of Iran but also global security. However, the fight for the liberation of Iran is not over—at least for Iranians.
Khosro Sayeh Isfahani is an advocate, journalist, and Internet researcher with years of experience working in Iran, including work related to the LGBTQI community. 

Further reading

Thu, Aug 4, 2022

My brother was executed during the 1988 massacre. The Hamid Noury trial verdict is a victory for truth and justice.

IranSource By Lawdan Bazargan

Only the truth can heal Iran and the Iranian people’s collective pain and protect future generations from the danger of such crimes.

Human Rights Iran

Thu, May 23, 2024

The ‘Butcher of Tehran’ is dead. It won’t change a thing.

IranSource By Khosro Kalbasi Isfahani

Despite his role in crimes against humanity, Ebrahim Raisi’s celebrated death will have no bearing on the Islamic Republic’s policy.

Civil Society Human Rights

Thu, Nov 10, 2022

The Hamid Noury conviction in Stockholm—a win for People’s Tribunals?

IranSource By Marilena Stegbauer

The former Iranian official’s conviction sends a powerful message: although the mills of justice may grind slowly, nobody can remain beyond the reach of justice forever.

Human Rights Iran

Image: Majid Nouri (R), son of the former staff member of the Iranian judiciary, Hamid Nouri, looks at two men while standing under a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Top R), his father Hamid Nouri (C), and Iran’s Late Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during a video conference session for analyzing of the bill of Hamid Nouri’s family to the Swedish court in the Faculty of Economics of the Allameh Tabataba’i University in downtown Tehran on July 8, 2022. In November 2019, Hamid Nouri was detained in Sweden and accused of participating in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto)