The Iranian Hamid Noury was convicted of crimes against international law and murder by the Stockholm District Court and the verdict will soon be delivered in the Court of Appeal. The crimes were committed in Iran in 1988.
Cold Facts can now reveal that a few days after Hamid Noury was arrested in November 2019, a Swedish police officer was subjected to a recruitment attempt by the Iranian embassy.
– Iran is trying to recruit people to become agents for their security services, says Gabriel Wernstedt at Säpo.
In November 2019, Iran’s ambassador visits the detainee Hamid Noury for the first time. The Swedish police officer Omid Farhand monitors the meeting because he knows Persian. On the way out of the meeting, a high-ranking official from the embassy stops and turns to Omid.
– He said something like it might be good for you to have contact with the Iranian ambassador in Sweden and it might be good for me to have the contact details of a Swedish police officer. He wanted to see if I was willing to have some kind of cooperation. Some way to recruit me, or at least feel if it was possible or not.
Called Säpo
The suspected recruitment attempt leads to Omid Farhand being called to a meeting with national police chief Anders Thornberg. Säpo was probably also informed.
– We do not go into individual cases, but what we can say in general terms is that we at Säpo assess that Iran is a tangible security threat.
– Is Iran trying to recruit agents in Sweden?
– Foreign powers continuously carry out that type of activity, they try to recruit people to become agents for their security services. And that includes both China, Russia and Iran.
The Iranian embassy denies that it tried to recruit the Swedish police, but does not want to appear for an interview.