“Political positions” and “fabricated accusations” – this is how the Iranian Foreign Ministry describes the verdict against Hamid Noury. The reactions came just hours after the decision, and the Iranian ambassador in Stockholm met with the Foreign Ministry on Friday to discuss the verdict. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not comment on what emerged in the conversation.
But how do you really agree that a judgment is correct when you work based on different legal procedures? This is one of the problems that Sweden is now facing in its relationship with Iran, according to the expert Rouzbeh Parsi.
– It is not seen that any crime has taken place, so according to the Iranian legal system, there is no legal basis for why someone could be prosecuted for this, he says.
Nobody: “Sweden violates civil rights”
Over the past six months, Iran has stepped up its efforts to pressure Sweden to suspend the trial and release Hamid Noury. Iran now says that the Swedish government is responsible for violating the rights of an Iranian citizen.
Rouzbeh Parsi believes that it is important to distinguish between two issues in order to understand Iran’s criticism of Sweden: has the mass execution taken place and if so, who was involved? Initially, Iran did not want to admit that the executions took place, and to the extent that they have been acknowledged, it is believed that they were carried out correctly when the people executed were convicted as terrorists.
Tray in a political game
That the countries’ relationship will be damaged by what is happening, Parsi sees as obvious because Iran does not see a difference between the political relationship and the procedure of the judiciary.
What is unclear, however, is how the countries will act and whether the case of the Swedish-Iranian researcher Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been accused of espionage and sentenced to death in Iran, may be affected.
– There is a risk that he will be another pawn in the political game. In the worst case, they execute the death sentence or threaten it once again, he says.
See Rouzbeh Parsi explain Iran’s criticism of Sweden in the clip above.