Swedish prosecutors said Tuesday they were charging an Iranian man for "war crimes and murder" over the execution of more than 100 political prisoners in 1988 in Karaj, Iran.
The case against 60-year-old Hamid Noury, who was arrested in Sweden in 2019 when he came to visit relatives, concerns his alleged part in the mass killings of prisoners towards the end of the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq.
Human rights groups have been campaigning for years for justice for what they consider to be the extrajudicial execution of thousands of Iranians, mostly young people, across the country.
Sweden's Prosecution Authority noted in a statement that the prisoners had been linked to the "People's Mujahedin of Iran," a political organisation seeking to overthrow the clerical leadership whose armed branch had launched several attacks against Iran.
In the summer of 1988, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini "issued an order to execute all prisoners held in Iranian prisons who sympathised with and were loyal in their convictions to the Mujahedin," the authority noted.
According to the authority, Noury held the position of "assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison," on the outskirts of Karaj, west of Tehran.
"The accused is suspected of participating, together with other perpetrators, in these mass executions and, as such, intentionally taking the lives of a large number of prisoners, who sympathised with the Mujahedin and, additionally, of subjecting prisoners to severe suffering which is deemed torture and inhuman treatment," the authority said.
In the charge sheet, seen by AFP, prosecutor Kristina Lindhoff Carleson noted that these actions constituted a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Noury's lawyer told AFP that he denies the charges against him.
Following the mass executions, and after a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq was enacted, the Iranian leadership also decided that other political prisoners "who sympathised with various left wing groups and were regarded as apostates by the Iranian leadership, should be executed."
Prosecutors said Noury, in his role at the prison, was also complicit in the killings that followed.
"These acts are classified as murder according to the Swedish Penal Code since they are not considered to be related to an armed conflict," the authority said.
In May, a group of more than 150 rights campaigners, including Nobel laureates, former heads of state or government and former UN officials, called for an international investigation into the 1988 killings.
The case remains sensitive in Iran as activists accuse officials now in government of being involved.