It’s the type of story you expect to find in a Fredrick Forsyth novel but it happened for real. Hamid Noury, an Iranian official implicated in the slaughter of thousands of dissidents in the summer of 1988, was lured to the west, apprehended and put on trial for his crimes.
Swedish-based Iranian filmmaker Nima Sarvestani is making a feature documentary about the case through his company Nima Film. The project, being pitched in the Nordisk Panorama Forum ‘Observer +’ section this week, already has support from the Swedish Film Institute, SVT, DR and NRK.
For Sarvestani, the story is deeply personal. One of his brothers (Rostam, who belonged to a student movement) had been put to death years before by the Iranian regime. When Nima himself returned to Iran for the first time after many years in exile, the first question his parents asked him was why he hadn’t done anything to seek justice. “We don’t know why our son was killed by the regime and we cannot charge them.”
Back in Sweden, Sarvestani and his friend Iraj Mesdaghi decided to keep a close watch on those involved in the state-sanctioned 1988 massacre of an estimated 4000 people). Other survivors and relatives have also been searching for the killers.
Iraj (who also featured in Sarvestani’s 2014 film Those Who Said No) is a writer and human rights activist who spent a decade in Iranian prisons. He was one of the survivors of the 1988 massacre. Iranian official Hamid Noury was one of the alleged perpetrators.
In recent years, Noury has been travelling freely outside Iran. Sarvestani learned that he was planning a trip to Japan for a conference and hatched a plan to arrest him once he landed. Noury, though, didn’t turn up, sending a colleague, his associate Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, in his place.
However, the filmmaker and his colleagues later received a tip off from a secret source (Noury’s ex son-in-law) that Noury was on the way to Europe. “From that time, we began to put together a plan to catch him.”
In November 2019, Noury was lured to Sweden. The authorities, satisfied there was a strong evidence that he was involved in the killings, sanctioned his arrest at Arlanda airport in Stockholm. It was at this point, with Noury behind bars, that Sarvestani began in earnest to make the documentary. (The project is being pitched in the Nordisk Panorama Forum as Hamid Noury – Trapped By Death Row Survivors but was previously called The Executioner).
Noury was put on trial in the summer of 2021. The film features material from the court case. Witnesses travelled from all over the world to testify against him. This is where the story takes an even stranger turn. In order to use this footage, Sarvestani needs Noury’s permission. He has therefore visited the prisoner in jail. “That’s why I talked to him.”
The director assured the man he holds responsible for the death of his brother that the documentary would not be one-sided. Noury’s perspective would be given. “I want to make an interview with him (Noury) so that he can tell in the film what he is thinking about,” Sarvestani explains.
Noury was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, he continues to maintain his innocence, denying he was at Gohardasht prison when the massacre took place. “He wrote a letter to me last week and he tried to explain that he was innocent. He reported all he said in the court…I don’t believe him, of course. He lies.”
Sarvestani has been studying Noury closely over the three years he has now been in captivity in Sweden. He has analysed his testimony. He has evidence that Noury was part of the death commission. “That’s why he doesn’t like me. He hates me…but I don’t care. I will put him in front of my camera.”
The Swedish prison authorities won’t allow a film crew into the jail. However, Sarvestani is hopeful he will be able to complete the interview once Noury’s new court case begins.
It isn’t vengeance that Sarvestani is after but an acknowledgement of what really happened in 1988. “It’s not important to us whether he [Noury] gets one year, two years or life [in jail] or nothing. The only thing which is very important for us is that the execution of the political prisoners [is discussed].”
The mass execution has never been properly acknowledged. It’s as if the killings never happened. However, Noury’s trials have successfully furnished “evidence to the whole world that the regime of Iran did a massacre of 4000 people over about six days. They hanged people. They hanged the young activists day and night. That was most important for us, that now all the world knows about this.”
Ebrahim Raisi, now the President of Iran, is also implicated in the 1988 massacre, is also alleged to have been one of the members of the death commission. Last week, Raisi was at the UN in New York and was barracked by human rights activists because of the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody. This has provoked furious anti-hijab protests – and has helped remind international observers of the killings 34 years ago.
Sarvestani has 1200 hours of material to feed into the documentary. The challenge now is to whittle this material down to 90 minutes.
This hasn’t been an easy documentary to finance. The director has been so busy following the case that he has had little time to try to find financiers. He is now looking for other partners to come on board. He won’t finish the film until Noury receives his final sentence.
“What happened in 1988 can happen today,” Sarvestani warns of the extreme violence the regime is still capable of unleashing on its own citizens. “Today, if there was no social media and internet, they [the regime] would continue killing and killing,” the director makes a chilling observation.
Sarvestani is not the only member of his family who has carved out a career as a documentary maker in Sweden. His sister Nahid Persson Sarvestani, director of Prostitution Behind The Veil and The Queen And I, is his sister. Yes, they talk about each other’s projects but they respect each other’s independence as director. “Even if she is my sister and I’m her brother, we have different eyes on things.”
He is currently in talks with sales agents who are keen to represent the film in the market.
