Ministry Urges European Governments to Free Iranian Prisoners
TEHRAN – Iran’s foreign ministry has chastised European governments for continued imprisonment of Iranian citizens on baseless allegations, calling for their immediate release.
Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the detention of Iranian national Hamid Nouri and his trial in Western is illegal and based on unfounded accusations.
Tehran, he said, is seriously demanding Nouri’s release and pursuing the case both at legal and political levels.
Nouri was arrested upon arrival at Stockholm Airport in November 2019. In July, the former judiciary employee was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Sweden. The charges against Nouri stem from allegations leveled against him by members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group.
Kanaani said the foreign ministry is also pushing for the release of Assadollah Assadi, another Iranian citizen detained in Belgium.
A Belgian court has sentenced Assadi, who served as the third counselor at Iran’s embassy in Vienna at the time of his arrest in June 2018, to 20 years in prison after accusing him of plotting an alleged attack against the MKO.
Iran has stressed that the process of detention and trial of Assadi has been flawed and in violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The MKO has martyred 17,161 ordinary Iranian citizens and officials, as well as four nuclear scientists through collusion with Mossad and other spy agencies like CIA.
The MKO is currently based in Albania, where it enjoys freedom of activity after being delisted by the European Union and the United States in 2009 and 2012, respectively.