You are here

Iran says Swedish court ruling against ex-official ‘unjust’

Iran says Swedish court ruling against ex-official ‘unjust’
Tehran is accused of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges that may have been trumped up. (Reuters)
Short Url

https://arab.news/9durh

Updated 25 December 2023
Reuters
Follow

Iran says Swedish court ruling against ex-official ‘unjust’

Iran says Swedish court ruling against ex-official ‘unjust’
  • Last Tuesday, a Swedish appeals court upheld the guilty verdict and life sentence for murder and serious crimes against international law for the former official Hamid Noury
Updated 25 December 2023
Reuters
Follow

DUBAI: Iran said on Monday it would keep seeking the release of a former Iranian official sentenced in Sweden to life in prison over a mass execution of political prisoners in Iran.

“This unjust and outrageous ruling does not end Iran’s diplomatic efforts to repatriate and free this Iranian citizen, and we will use all legal and available means,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said, without specifying.

Last Tuesday, a Swedish appeals court upheld the guilty verdict and life sentence for murder and serious crimes against international law for the former official Hamid Noury.

Relations between Sweden and Iran have soured since 2019 when Sweden arrested Noury for his part in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s.

“We seriously object to the verdict and to what has taken place during this citizen’s long period of detention… and his basic rights have not been respected in Sweden’s prisons,” Kanaani added at a weekly news conference.

Earlier in December, Iran began the trial of a Swedish national, Johan Floderus, employed by the EU who is charged with spying for Israel and “corruption on earth,” a crime that carries the death penalty.

Rights groups and Western governments have accused Tehran of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges that may have been trumped up.

Tehran says such arrests are based on its criminal

code and it denies holding people for political reasons.

Rights groups have also warned that Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian national sentenced to death in Iran on charges of spying for Israel, may be executed following the verdict against Noury.

A spokesperson for Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it had been alerted to the information issued by rights groups, but said this had not been confirmed.

“Ahmadreza Djalali’s situation is continuously raised with high-level representatives of Iran. Sweden has long demanded that the death penalty not be carried out,” the spokesperson said.

Djalali, a disaster medicine doctor and researcher, was arrested in 2016 while on an academic visit to Iran.

Topics: Iran Swedish court Tehran

Related

UN says Swedish citizen faces Iran execution ‘shortly’
World
UN says Swedish citizen faces Iran execution ‘shortly’
Swedish court upholds life sentence in Iran executions case
World
Swedish court upholds life sentence in Iran executions case

Israeli army says sirens sound after missile launch from Yemen

Israeli army says sirens sound after missile launch from Yemen
Updated 13 sec ago
Follow

Israeli army says sirens sound after missile launch from Yemen

Israeli army says sirens sound after missile launch from Yemen
Updated 13 sec ago
TEL AVIV: The Israeli military said sirens sounded across central Israel on Monday as it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.
“One missile launched from Yemen was intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory,” the military said in a statement.
An AFP journalist reported that sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, the main commercial hub.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said it had not received any calls about any casualties from the missile interception.
Earlier on Monday, an Israeli navy missile boat intercepted a drone in the Mediterranean after it was launched from Yemen, the military said.
The Iran-backed Houthis have launched several attacks against Israel from Yemen since the war in Gaza began more than a year ago.
The Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians.
On December 9, a drone claimed by Houthis exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israel city of Yavne, causing no casualties.
In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s population centers, have also frequently targeted ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Assad denies ‘planned’ exit from Syria

Assad denies ‘planned’ exit from Syria
Updated 1 min 11 sec ago
AFP
Follow

Assad denies ‘planned’ exit from Syria

Assad denies ‘planned’ exit from Syria
  • Former officials said that the night before he left, Assad had asked his close adviser to prepare a speech
  • He flew from Damascus airport to Russia’s Hmeimim air base, and from there out of the country: former officials
Updated 1 min 11 sec ago
AFP

DAMASCUS: Bashar Assad on Monday said he fled Syria only after Damascus had fallen and denounced the country’s new leaders as “terrorists,” in his first remarks since militants seized the capital and unseated him.
An opposition alliance launched a lightning offensive from its northwest Syria bastion on November 27, swiftly capturing major cities from government control and taking the capital on December 8.
“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed,” said a statement from Assad on the ousted presidency’s Telegram channel.
“I remained in Damascus, carrying out my duties until the early hours” of Sunday December 8, it added.
“As terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus, I moved to Latakia in coordination with our Russian allies to oversee combat operations,” the statement said, adding that he arrived at the Hmeimim base that morning.
“As the field situation in the area continued to deteriorate, the Russian military base itself came under intensified attack by drone strikes,” it said, and “Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening” of December 8.
Five former officials previously told AFP that hours before militant forces seized Damascus and toppled Assad’s government, the former Syrian president was already out of the country.
The officials said that the night before, Assad had even asked his close adviser to prepare a speech — which the ousted leader never gave — before flying from Damascus airport to Russia’s Hmeimim air base, and from there out of the country.
“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose,” the statement from Assad added.
Though Assad has long branded any who oppose his rule “terrorists,” Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the group that led his overthrow, has also been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the United States and other Western governments.
With its roots in a former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, HTS broke with the extremist group in 2016 and has sought to soften its image.
In recent days, both the US and Britain have established contact with the group.

Topics: Fall of Assad

Related

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region
Middle-East
Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region
Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail
Middle-East
Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP
Follow

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region
  • It called the raids “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012.”
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP

TARTUS: Israeli strikes targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region overnight, a war monitor said Monday, calling them “the heaviest strikes” there in years.
“Israeli warplanes launched strikes” targeting a series of sites including air defense units and “surface-to-surface missile depots,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It said 18 raids “targeted strategic locations on the Syrian coast,” added the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside the country.
It called the raids “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012.”
Tartus province also has a naval base belonging to Russia, a close ally of president Bashar Assad whom Islamist-forces ousted just over a week ago after capturing swathes of the country in a lightning offensive.
In the village of Bmalkah in the hills above Tartus, an AFP journalist saw roads filled with shattered glass and shreds of roller doors.
The force of blasts had stripped the leaves of olive trees in groves surrounding the village, and smoke still rose from nearby hillsides.
Residents told AFP that explosions began shortly after midnight and continued until almost 6:00 am (0300 GMT).
“It was like an earthquake. All the windows in my house were blown out,” said 28-year-old Ibrahim Ahmed, an employee in a legal office.
Clean-up crews sawed at fallen trees that had blocked the road to the next community. They also swept up missile and shell parts, even as the valley echoed to more blasts as pockets of stockpiled munitions caught fire.
“The village did not sleep last night. The kids were crying,” said one middle-aged man in a blue sweatshirt who refused to give his name.
“Most of the people had already left their homes toward the city, now they have lost their houses,” he added.
At a nearby military complex, smoke billowed from arched concrete bunkers cut into the hillside, and secondary explosions threw out shrapnel that fell among the trees.
Broken parts of mortars, rockets and missile launch tubes littered the hillsides.
According to the Observatory, 473 Israeli strikes have targeted military sites in Syria since the opposition alliance toppled Assad on December 8.

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP
Follow

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP

ANKARA: A team of Turkish rescuers began an in-depth search of Syria’s infamous Saydnaya prison on Monday, a spokesman for Turkiye’s AFAD disaster management agency told AFP.
Located just north of Damascus, the prison has become a symbol of the rights abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.
Prisoners held inside the complex, which was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, were freed early last week by the oppoition forces who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar Assad on December 8.
AFAD said it had sent a team of nearly 80 people to conduct a search-and-rescue operation to “find people thought to be trapped in Sadnaya military prison,” with its director due to give a press conference outside the prison about its mission, spokesman Kubilay Ozyurt told AFP.
The complex is thought to descend several levels underground, fueling suspicion more prisoners could be being held in as yet undiscovered hidden cells.
But the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), believes the rumors are unfounded.
AFAD said the team, which is specialized in “heavy” urban search and rescue operations, would work with “advanced search and rescue devices,” the Anadolu state news agency reported.
The prison complex was thoroughly searched by Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers but they wrapped up their operations on Tuesday, saying they were unable to find any more prisoners.
Rescuers have punched holes in walls to investigate rumors of secret levels housing missing prisoners, but found nothing, leaving many thousands of families disappointed — their relatives are probably dead and may never be found.
ADMSP said the opposition forces freed more than 4,000 prisoners from Saydnaya, which Amnesty International has described as a “human slaughterhouse.”
The organization, which is based in southern Turkiye, believes more than 30,000 prisoners died there as a result of execution, torture, starvation or a lack of medical care between 2011 and 2018.

Topics: Fall of Assad

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP
Follow

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement
  • A foreign ministry spokesman said it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP

BERLIN: Germany on Monday urged Israel to “abandon” a plan to double the population living in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights at the southwestern edge of Syria.
A foreign ministry spokesman said “it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power.”
The spokesman, Christian Wagner, added that Berlin therefore called on its ally Israel “to abandon this plan” announced Sunday by the Israeli government.

Topics: Fall of Assad Israel Golan Heights

Latest updates

Saudi Arabia’s payments industry poised for $21.7bn revenue by 2028: BCG 
Saudi Arabia’s payments industry poised for $21.7bn revenue by 2028: BCG 
Saudi Heritage Commission registers 13,040 new sites of historical importance
Saudi Heritage Commission registers 13,040 new sites of historical importance
Israeli army says sirens sound after missile launch from Yemen
People take cover in the stairway of a building, while sirens sound in Tel Aviv, Israel, December 16, 2024. (Reuters)
Saudi Arabia to develop local talent for container shipping industry
Saudi Arabia to develop local talent for container shipping industry
UN conference in Riyadh charts path for global action on land and drought management
UN conference in Riyadh charts path for global action on land and drought management

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.