{"id":232686,"date":"2021-01-06T09:04:10","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T14:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=232686"},"modified":"2023-01-27T12:56:23","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T11:56:23","slug":"with-back-to-back-prosecutions-europe-inches-toward-holding-irans-regime-accountable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/human-rights\/with-back-to-back-prosecutions-europe-inches-toward-holding-irans-regime-accountable\/","title":{"rendered":"With Back-to-Back Prosecutions, Europe Inches toward Holding Iran\u2019s Regime Accountable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Accountability-for-Iranian-regime-06012021\"<\/p>\n

On January 22, a Belgian court is expected to hand down a sentence for an Iranian diplomat-terrorist Assadollah Assadi<\/a> who is accused of taking advantage of his diplomatic privileges to bring explosives into Europe and hand-delivering them to two Iranian-Belgian operatives who planned to set them off at a gathering<\/a> of Iranian expatriates outside Paris. His case is the first of this kind, even though he is far from the first Iranian diplomat to be identified as playing a role in the Iranian regime\u2019s well-known terrorist activity.
\nThe Assadi case is a hopeful sign that Western governments may finally be taking a more serious approach to holding Iranian officials accountable for their malign behavior on the world stage. This is a litmus test for the EU.
\nAfter the Belgian court makes its ruling, that hope will be further amplified by the opening of another case in Sweden. And that latter case will have implications not just for potential Western victims of Iranian state terrorism, but also for the domestic victims of Tehran\u2019s political violence.
\nThe defendant in the Swedish case is a former deputy prosecutor, interrogator, and member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC<\/a>) named Hamid Noury<\/a>, and he is reputed to have played a role in the worst known crime against humanity to take place in Iran, the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners.
\nBy the summer of 1988, he had been working for several years under Assadollah Lajevardi, the notorious warden of Evin Prison, and had demonstrated a penchant for securing confessions from detainees via torture. His position and his reputation made him a prime candidate to work alongside the \u201cdeath commission<\/a>\u201d that was convened that summer in response to a fatwa<\/a> from the regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Khomeini, in which he stated that all political prisoners who remain loyal to the People\u2019s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI\/MEK<\/a>) must be executed.
\nSoon thereafter, death commissions were set up all over the country and mass executions started.
\nIn the span of just a few months, those commissions collectively oversaw an estimated 30,000 hangings<\/a>. An audio recording that was leaked to the public in 2016 confirmed what had long been reported by opposition activists, especially the MEK, which had long been demanding an end to the impunity of the regime\u2019s leaders and the need for an independent international investigation and bringing the perpetrators to justice.<\/p>\n

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Iran's 1988 massacre of political prisoners<\/div><\/div>
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