{"id":252380,"date":"2021-12-01T10:39:30","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T15:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=252380"},"modified":"2023-02-02T21:53:58","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T20:53:58","slug":"hamid-noury-lies-about-irans-1988-massacre-but-confirms-the-regimes-barbarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-resistance\/hamid-noury-lies-about-irans-1988-massacre-but-confirms-the-regimes-barbarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamid Noury Lies About Iran\u2019s 1988 Massacre but Confirms the Regime\u2019s Barbarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stockholm-Protests\"<\/p>\n

The former Iranian prison official Hamid Noury<\/a> gave testimony in his own defense for a fifth time on Wednesday, answering questions from Swedish public prosecutors regarding the 1988 massacre in Iran\u2019s prisons, his own role in the massacre. \u00a0Noury stands accused of war crimes and mass murder on account of participating in that massacre by leading political detainees to the \u201cdeath corridor\u201d at Gohardasht Prison, to be executed in groups of a dozen or more.<\/p>\n

Noury\u2019s defense so far has switched back and forth between denying the most basic facts of the case and acknowledging the underlying the crimes of Iranian regime\u2019s courts and the clerical regime. Before he took the stand, more than a dozen other witnesses testified in Stockholm and in Durres, Albania regarding their interactions with Noury and his fellow jailers before, during, and after the 1988 massacre<\/a>. Nevertheless, Noury attempted at one point to claim that he was on leave from his position during the period in question. He also denied the very existence of Gohardasht Prison and referred to the massacre itself as \u201cmade up and undocumented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noury\u2019s remarks reflect the inherent secrecy of Iran\u2019s judicial system, not any serious dispute about the severity or focus of the massacre. The MEK<\/a> itself has carefully investigated the details via a network spanning much of Iranian society. In this way, it has identified the sites of mass graves in at least 36 different cities. The existence of such graves has been acknowledged by international human rights organizations like Amnesty International, which has also warned about the phenomenon of regime authorities ordering construction projects to conceal evidence of the 1988 massacre.<\/p>\n

Those projects exist as part of a much larger cover-up that saw authorities ban the very mention of the mass killings for the better part of three decades. This conspiracy of silence was challenged anew in 2016 with the release of a contemporary audio recording featuring the voices of many high-level participants in the massacre, as well as Hossein Ali Montazeri, the only major regime official to voice dissent about the purge of dissidents and the underlying fatwa<\/a> issued by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, Montazeri was slated to take over the supreme leadership, but following the massacre, he was driven out of the regime entirely.<\/p>\n

Hamid Noury mentioned both Montazeri<\/a> and the fatwa in two trial sessions, alleging that Khomeini\u2019s former heir-apparent fabricated the fatwa in order to defame the regime. However, this testimony contradicts statements by a number of other regime officials and loyalists who have defended Khomeini\u2019s call for the mass execution of dissidents whom he held responsible for \u201cenmity against God.\u201d Some of those have even gone so far as to say that the supreme leader\u2019s religious edict conveyed \u201cGod\u2019s command\u201d and therefore could not be questioned.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey executed all but three of us\u201d\u2014former Iranian political prisoner in Hamid Noury's court<\/div><\/div>
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