Human Rights Official: Sweden Collaborating with Israel against Iran

Sweden, in collaboration with Israel, has been implementing a hostile approach towards Iran over the past few years, Qaribabadi said on Tuesday.

“The Swedish government, certainly with the support of some other European countries, specially the British government, was seeking to put the Islamic Republic of Iran on trial because Sweden’s approach has been a hostile approach against the Islamic Republic of Iran for several years regarding national security issues,” he said.

Qaribabadi said that the case of former Iranian official, Hamid Nouri, is not just a simple trial of an Iranian citizen, because the basis for the formation of this case in Sweden is not judicial, technical or legal, but has a purely political nature.

“Sweden has always formed a political front against Iran…in terms of hardware, it has also acted against our national security by hosting terrorist groups,” Qaribabadi added.

“We are currently facing three cases related to Sweden in matters related to the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The first issue is that Sweden is hosting the anti-Iran Al-Ahwaziya terrorist group which has been using Sweden as its main base, he said.

The second issue regarding relations with Sweden is the anti-Iran Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK, NCRI or PMOI) terrorist group which has been using Sweden as one of its good bases in Europe, Qaribabadi said.

Isn’t Sweden claiming to be a defender of human rights, fighting terrorism, and establishing a world full of peace, security and stability? So why does it host terrorist groups? he asked.

The official said the third issue in relations with Sweden is the case of Iranian national Ahmad Reza Jalali who was arrested for espionage charges a few years ago.

Qaribabadi said the intelligence he had provided to Israel’s spy agency Mossad led to the assassination of two Iranian nuclear scientists.

“We have the documents of the case of Ahmad Reza Jalali in Sweden, who met with Mossad agents at bases provided to Mossad by the Swedish secret service,” he explained.

“Sweden has been Mossad’s intelligence partner in recruiting agents and taking action against our national security. What does this behavior mean in international relations?” Qaribabadi said.

In relevant remarks on Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh referred to the trial of an ex-Iranian official in Sweden, and cautioned the Swedish government to stop developing a quid pro quo case to free Ahmad Reza Jalali, who is waiting execution for spying and terrorism charges in Iran.

Speaking to reporters in a press conference in Tehran, Khatibzadeh referred to the case of Hamid Nouri, who has been tried in Sweden on alleged abuse of prisoners charges in 1988, and the case of Jalali, and said that the two cases are not related at all.

The defeated MKO terrorist group tries to politicize Nouri’s trial in Sweden, he said, adding, that the Swedish government allows the MKO to do so raises suspicion.

Khatibzadeh rejected competence of the Swedish court to consider Nouri's case, and said basic rights of the Iranian national were not respected in Sweden.

The Swedish government should not think that the case of Jalali will be ignored by taking the case hostage; his case has been espionage and being followed up, he underlined.

Swedish prosecutors have requested the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for Hamid Nouri, accusing the former Iranian judiciary official of prisoner abuse in 1988.

The charges against Nouri stem from allegations leveled against him by members of anti-Iran MKO terrorist group.

He was arrested upon arrival in Sweden at Stockholm Airport in 2019 and was immediately imprisoned. Nouri, now 61, has been held in solitary confinement for over two years and his family has not been allowed to visit him in prison. 

His accusers allege that Nouri was involved in the execution and torture of MKO members in 1988. Nouri vehemently rejects the allegations.

During the 89th session of his trial on Friday, Swedish prosecutors read a summary of Nouri’s indictment in court, a day after submitting a request for life imprisonment for him. 

The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community. Its members fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where they received support from then dictator Saddam Hussein.

The notorious outfit has carried out numerous attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials for several decades.

In 2012, the US State Department removed the MKO from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated to Saudi regime and other regimes adversarial to Iran.

A few years ago, MKO members were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former US military base in Baghdad, and were later sent to Albania.

Those members, who have managed to escape, have revealed MKO's scandalous means of access to money, almost exclusively coming from Riyadh.

The MKO terrorist group specified the targets as martyred Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, who commanded the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Iranian President Seyed Ebrahim Rayeesi.

The terrorist organization said it would “welcome” their assassination, adding that it desired for the ranking officials to “join” Asadollah Lajevardi, Tehran’s former chief prosecutor, and Ali Sayyad-Shirazi, a former commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces during Iraq’s 1980-88 war against Iran.

Earlier in June 2019, a leaked audio of a phone conversation between two members of MKO, revealed Saudi regime has colluded with the MKO elements to frame Iran for the tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf.

In the audio, which is being released by the Iran Front Page for the first time, Shahram Fakhteh, an official member and the person in charge of MKO’s cyber operations, is heard talking with a US-based MKO sympathizer named Daei-ul-Eslam in Persian, IFP news reported.

In this conversation, the two elements discuss the MKO’s efforts to introduce Iran as the culprit behind the tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf, and how the Saudis contacted them to pursue the issue.

“In the past week we did our best to blame the [Iranian] regime for the (oil tanker) blasts. Saudis have called Sister Maryam (Rajavi)’s office to follow up on the results, [to get] a conclusion of what has been done, and the possible consequences,” Fakhteh is heard saying.

“I guess this can have different consequences. It can send the case to the UN Security Council or even result in military intervention. It can have any consequence,” Daei-ul-Eslam says.

Attacks on two commercial oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on June 13, 2019 and an earlier attack on four oil tankers off the UAE’s Fujairah port on May 12, 2019, escalated tensions in West Asia and raised the prospect of a military confrontation between Iran and the United States.

The US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have rushed to blame Iran for the incidents, with the US military releasing a grainy video it claimed shows Iranian forces in a patrol boat removing an unexploded mine from the side of a Japanese-owned tanker which caught fire in 2019.

It later released some images of the purported Iranian operation after the video was seriously challenged by experts and Washington’s own allies.

The MKO which is said to be a cult which turns humans into obedient robots, turned against Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has carried out several terrorist attacks killing senior officials in Iran; yet the West which says cultism is wrong and claims to be against terrorism, supports this terrorist group officially.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the MKO began its enmity against Iran by killing over 17,000 Iranians and terrorist activities. Several members of the terrorist group and its leaders are living in France now, freely conducting terrorist activities.

The MKO terrorist group has martyred 17,161 Iranian citizens, including late president Mohammad Ali Rajayee, former prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, late Head of Supreme Judicial Council Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, late Deputy Chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff Ali Sayyad Shirazi, and 27 legislators, as well as four nuclear scientists.