US declares new spherical of sanctions on Iran’s prime prosecutor, a automobile producer, and officers from the elite Revolutionary Guards.
(Reuters Archive)
The United States has focused Iran’s prosecutor common in its newest sanctions over Tehran’s response to main protests, deploring his position in executions.
“We again call on Iran’s leadership to immediately cease its violent crackdown and to listen to its people. We will continue to promote accountability for those involved as we support the Iranian people,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned in a press release on Wednesday.
“The United States continues to help the individuals of Iran within the face of this brutal repression, and we’re rallying rising worldwide consensus to carry the regime accountable.”
The Treasury Department said that the prosecutor general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, was responsible for human rights abuses, including torture and death-penalty trials of protesters.
“We denounce the Iranian regime’s intensifying use of violence against its own people who are advocating for their human rights,” Treasury said in a statement, noting that Montazeri has presided over prosecutions of protesters, some of whom have been executed or condemned to death.
The hanging earlier this month of Mohsen Shekari, the first person known to be executed over the protests, bore “little resemblance to a significant trial,” a Treasury Department statement said.
Montazeri drew widespread attention earlier this month when he was quoted as saying that the state was abolishing the morality police, which enforces strict codes on women’s dress.
Montazeri’s apparently off-the-cuff remarks drew scepticism, and there were no signs of follow-up in ending the notorious unit.
READ MORE: Parents plead Iran judiciary to spare son who faces imminent dying penalty
Iranian authorities have killed tons of of peaceable protestors, together with kids, issued harsh sentences, together with the dying penalty following sham trials, and detained hundreds. Today, we’re sanctioning Iranian officers and an Iranian entity related to those abuses.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) December 21, 2022
Manufacturer, officers sanctioned
Also hit by the sanctions was firm Imen Sanat Zaman Fara, the producer of automobiles utilized in crowd suppression, and 4 officers from the elite Revolutionary Guards, together with one concerned in monitoring the web.
The transfer blocks any US belongings and criminalises transactions with focused officers and firms who usually are not identified to have vital holdings within the United States — which already maintains sweeping sanctions towards Tehran.
The protests, Iran’s most widespread in years, broke out after the dying within the morality police’s custody in September of a 22-year-old lady.
She had been arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating the nation’s gown code.
500 protesters have been killed, with at the very least 18,000 arrested, in line with Human Rights Activists in Iran, a gaggle that has been intently monitoring the unrest.
More than 60 safety forces have been killed, in line with the group.
READ MORE: Iran points first dying sentence over protests — report
Source: TRTWorld and businesses
