Tuesday marked the forty-eighth session of the Hamid Noury trial, in Stockholm, Sweden. Noury, a former official in various prisons of Iran, is charged with torturing inmates in the Gohardasht prison (Karaj) and taking part in the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners. Noury was apprehended by Swedish authorities during a trip to the country in 2019. He is now standing trial in a court where many of his victims are giving harrowing testimonies of how he and other regime officials brutally tortured and executed prisoners.
On Tuesday, Mohammad Khodabandeh-Loui, a former political prisoner, testified in court and gave and account of how Noury and other prison authorities took part in torturing prisoners in Evin and Gohardasht prison. Khodabandeh-Loui spent seven years behind bars for supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). He is one of several witnesses to the 1988 massacre, in which the regime executed more than 30,000 political prisoners in the span of a few months. Most of the victims were supporters of the MEK.
Khodabandeh-Loui’s father, Ali, a dentist, was executed in 1980 for supporting the MEK. His brother Mahmoud and his cousin Gholamreza Pour-Eghbali were arrested in 1990 as they tried to join the MEK. Both were later executed.
In 1987, a group of political prisoners in Gohardasht went on hunger strike to protest the inhuman behavior of prison authorities. They were taken to the “Gas Chamber,” a room with no airway where the prisoners were jampacked and kept in tight quarters until they passed out from lack of oxygen.
“During a severe crackdown on prisoners in 1987 in the gas chamber, I saw Hamid Noury,” Khodabandeh-Loui said. Noury, his boss Mohammad Moghiseh (also known as Nasserian), and other guards started beating prisoners and dragging them out of their cells.
“I was the only one standing at the end of the room. Nasserian, Davoud Lashgari, and Abbasi [Noury] entered the room. Nasserian shouted: ‘It’s your dead body that will go out of this door today,” Khodabandeh-Loui said.
And then they started beating him.
“My blindfold came off, and I saw their faces. Abbasi [Noury] hit me hard in the face, and I felt an agonizing pain in the right side of my face,” he said.
Khodabandeh lost sight of one of his eyes as a result of the blow.
The massacre began in Evin prison began on July 27, 1988, according to Khodabandeh-Loui’s account. He learned from one of the inmates in an adjacent cell that the guards had taken several prisoners for execution.
“The last people they took for execution were my cellmates. They were taken out on September 24, 1988,” he said.
Khodabandeh-Loui was transferred to Evin prison along with 157 other prisoners during the massacre. “Only seven of us survived,” he said.
During the massacre, political prisoners were taken to a corridor that became known as the “Death Corridor,” where prisoners waited for their turn to meet the Death Commission. At the end of the Death Corridor was the “Death Hall,” the warehouse where prisoners were hanged in groups. As one group of inmates were hanged, the prison authorities forced the others to watch until it became their turn to have the noose thrown around their neck.
The “Death Commission” was a group of regime officials who summoned political prisoners one by one and decided their fate. Prisoners who did not disavow their support for the MEK would be sent to the gallows. Among the members of the Death Commission in Evin and Gohardasht prison was Ebrahim Raisi, the regime’s current president.
The Death Commission was acting on the direct orders of regime supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini, who had issued a fatwa that stated anyone who continues to support the MEK is an enemy of God and deserves to die.
Prisoners waited until their turn before the Death Commission, a group tasked with deciding which prisoners would live or be executed. Members of the commission included current regime president Ebrahim Raisi and former justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi.#ProsecuteRaisiNOW pic.twitter.com/GliecyzAaU
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) November 15, 2021
Hamid Noury had previously claimed that Khodabandeh-Loui and several other plaintiffs were provoked by Iraj Mesdaghi to participate in this trial. Mesdaghi, who has filed as a plaintiff in the case, is in reality an agent for the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). He was recruited in 1981 while he was in prison for supporting the MEK. After being enlisted by the MOIS, he posed as an MEK supporter and regime dissident for years, acting as a sleeper cell for the regime. Upon receiving orders from his masters in Tehran, Mesdaghi launched a campaign to defame the Iranian Resistance, and claim credit for all the efforts led by the Resistance in seeking justice for the victims of the 1988 massacre.
“By pretending to be the only one seeking justice for victims, he [Mesdaghi] wants to pursue his malicious political goals against the MEK and its members who were executed [in 1988]” Khodabandeh-Loui said in this regard.
“I vehemently reject Noury’s claim” he added. “I was the one who gave Mesdaghi’s video [insulting individuals like Khodabandeh-Loui] to the police.”
“This person insulted my friends in Albania and me, saying that the MEK prevented us from testifying against Noury,” Khodabandeh-Loui said, adding that behind making all this fuss, “Mesdaghi intended to prevent us from actually participating in this trial.”
“I lost my eye when I was 23 years old due to the beatings of Noury and his boss. I address this court now. Do I need to be bribed or coerced to participate in this court? Even based on personal motivation, my eye tells me to participate in this court,” he said. He also added that his father and brother were executed by the regime. “How can I remain silent?” he said.
He also shed light on Mesdaghi’s relation with the regime in previous years.
“I was in Baghdad in 2011, where the Iranian embassy was actively hunting the MEK members or trying to recruit them,” Khodabandeh-Loui said. “At that time, Mesdaghi advised me to go to the Iranian embassy, tell them that I had repented [my support for the MEK] and ask for a passport,” he added.
Khodabandeh-Loui also emphasized that more than 1,600 former Iranian political prisoners have signed a letter condemning Mesdaghi’s action and his role as an MOIS agent.
While the trial proceeded, a large group of supporters of the MEK held their protest rally in front of the court in Stockholm. The demonstrators are demanding for a larger tribunal that includes other perpetrators and orchestrators of the 1988 massacre, including regime president Ebrahim Raisi and supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
The 1988 massacre has been described as a war crime and crime against humanity. Legal experts also recognize it as a “genocide” and should be addressed by international tribunals.
 and taking part in the ){kind=link}