TEHRAN -- A former Iranian official who has been incarcerated in Sweden since 2019 on false charges leveled against him by an anti-Iran terrorist organization has not been able to contact his family for the past 20 days, in what has been a brazen violation of his rights by the government in Stockholm.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted the Iranian Judiciary’s public relations department on Monday as saying that Hamid Nouri has not been allowed to call his family for the past 20 days, increasing his family members’ concerns about his health condition.
Nouri was arrested upon arrival in Sweden at Stockholm Airport in November 2019 and was immediately imprisoned. He has been held in solitary confinement for over two years.
According to the latest reports, the judicial officials in Sweden have changed his cell, but his conditions have not improved and he is still kept in a solitary cell despite grave concerns about his health.
His family says that despite all their efforts to contact Nouri during the past 20 days, Sweden’s judicial officials have not allowed any contact with him.
Earlier in May, Nouri’s wife told Press TV, “My husband traveled to Sweden with an invitation and as he was disembarking from the plane he was brutally detained and insulted by several police officers in front of a crowd of Iranians and others and taken into custody.”
Swedish prosecutors have requested the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for Nouri, accusing the former Iranian judiciary official of prisoner abuse in 1988.
The charges against Nouri stem from accusations leveled against him by members of the anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), who claim that Nouri was involved in the execution and torture of MKO members in 1988. Nouri vehemently denies the allegations.
On May 4, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian called his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde, demanding Nouri’s immediate release, saying Tehran regards his detention and trial as “illegal.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has also summoned the Swedish ambassador to Tehran, condemning Nouri’s continued imprisonment as “totally illegal” and driven by “false allegations made by the MKO terrorist organization and the hostile smear campaign against the Islamic Republic.”