On 10 August 2021, the landmark trial of Hamid Noury, an Iranian citizen accused of participating in the execution of political prisoners in 1988, began in Sweden. Two days later, the Sudanese government announced it would hand over former ruler Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. These rapid developments lead one to muse that Martin Luther King Jr got it right after all: "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
THE CASE AGAINST HAMID NOURY
The Guardian reports that 60-year-old Hamid Noury was arrested at Stockholm Arlanda Airport in 2019, having travelled to Sweden to see family members and enjoy a luxury cruise. However, before Noury’s arrival, human rights activist Iraj Mesdaghi compiled thousands of pages showing that Noury served as assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the notorious Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, west of the capital Tehran.
In 1988, as the Iran-Iraq War was drawing to a close, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the execution of prisoners believed to be sympathetic to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)—a leftwing group which opposes the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Swedish authorities accuse Noury of “intentionally taking the lives of a large number of prisoners” as well as “subjecting prisoners to ... torture and inhuman treatment”.
Noury is only part of a bigger picture. His prosecution puts a spotlight on Iran’s new president Ebrahim Raisi. In 1988, Raisi was a deputy prosecutor and member of the “death committee” that implemented Khomeini’s execution orders. Human rights groups have long demanded an investigation and called for Raisi to be tried for crimes against humanity.
THE CASE AGAINST AL-BASHIR
In April 2019, following months of popular protests, a coup toppled ex-president Omar al-Bashir after nearly 30 years in power. The ICC issued two arrest warrants against Bashir in March 2009 and July 2010, charging him with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide allegedly committed between 2003 and 2008. At the time, non-Arab rebels in the Darfur region were seeking greater autonomy from the Arab-dominated central government. The War in Darfur killed some 300,000 Sudanese and displaced millions more.
The decision to hand over Bashir and other officials wanted by the ICC ends a decade-long diplomatic standoff. State parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC are obliged to extradite persons on their territory, who are subject to an arrest warrant from the ICC. Prior to his overthrow, this did not prevent Bashir from travelling freely across the globe, where the governments of various ICC member states – including South Africa, Uganda, and Jordan – failed to arrest him.
AN AGE OF IMPUNITY
Both developments illustrate how two branches of international criminal justice can and should operate. Firstly, serious crimes should be tried before national courts on the basis of universal jurisdiction--the principle that some crimes are so heinous in nature that they may be prosecuted anywhere in the world irrespective of where they were committed. The ICC’s jurisdiction over international crimes is complementary to that of national courts and applies where the latter are unwilling or unable to prosecute (for example, where the accused is a sitting head of state or government).
However, the foremost requirement in the pursuit of international justice is political will, which is often lacking. Bashir’s unimpeded international travel sprees and Raisi’s election to the presidency being two cases in point). Fortunately, there are moments when the geopolitical stars align and the tireless work of activists pays off. As the world edges towards a new age of political impunity, the second week of August provided a much-needed counterbalance to that political impunity—accountability.