US sanctions Iranian officials for protest-related executions

The US Treasury Department has announced new sanctions targeting officials, including Iran’s attorney general.

The United States has announced another round of sanctions against Iranian officials, targeting organizations and government figures involved in the government’s crackdown on protesters.

The US Treasury Department said in a statement Wednesday that it would impose sanctions on Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, for his role in a protest-related execution, along with other figures and organizations the US has accused of complicity in human rights abuses.

“The case of the first protester to be executed, a young man named Mohsen Shekari, proceeded with little resemblance to a significant trial,” Treasury said in a news release Wednesday, adding that Montazeri had “issued a directive to the courts to act ‘decisively’”. ‘ and issuing harsh sentences to many of those arrested during the ongoing protests.”

The US government has used a series of sanctions to increase pressure on the Iranian government, which has responded to nationwide protests challenging Iran’s clerical regime with repressive measures.

Iran has rejected criticism of its human rights record and accused the US of using double standards to score points against a country seen as a rival to the US.

According to human rights groups outside Iran, several hundred people have been killed since protests broke out in September following the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody in September after being arrested by the ” morality” of the country. policeman”.

The Iranian government carried out its second protest-related execution earlier this month, killing a man named Majidreza Rahnavard for allegedly killing two members of the security forces.

The Treasury announcement said that, in addition to Montazeri, several figures linked to military and paramilitary organizations would also be sanctioned, as well as a manufacturing company that provides riot control equipment to Iranian security forces.

“Today’s action targets the senior official overseeing the prosecution of protesters, as well as the leaders of the military and paramilitary organizations that violently repress and detain protesters, and a company that purchases and supplies security forces tools of repression,” the statement said.

The company Imen Sanat Zaman Fara has been designated by the US because it makes equipment used by Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF), a group that has been deployed by the government to suppress protests in areas where the government he has been accused of some of his harshest alleged abuses.

Other sanctioned figures include Moslem Moein, who the Treasury says oversees online censorship efforts through the paramilitary “Basij Resistance Forces,” and Hossein Maroufi, the Basij deputy coordinator.

Earlier this month, Washington appointed Ali Akbar Javidan, the LEF commander in Iran’s Kermanshah province, where LEF forces were accused of killing protesters. Another LEF commander in the Gulf of Oman town of Chabahar, Ebrahim Kouchakzaei, was also attacked.

Sanctions freeze any US assets held by individuals or organizations and generally prohibit people in the US from dealing with them.

The United States has led an effort to pressure Iran over alleged human rights abuses, successfully pushing for Iran to be expelled from the main women’s rights body at the United Nations earlier this month.