Pressure Builds Againt Iran's Raisi Before Trip To New York
Days before Iran’s president is scheduled to attend the UN General Assembly, three former prisoners in Iran are launching a civil lawsuit against him in New York.
Days before Iran’s president is scheduled to attend the UN General Assembly, three former prisoners in Iran are launching a civil lawsuit against him in New York.
The hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi’s scheduled trip to the United States, together with a large entourage, has been the subject of controversy. Human rights activists, Iranian dissidents, former political prisoners and hostages in Iran have urged the Biden administration not to issue a visa to Raisi.
Raisi served as Iran’s Judiciary chief before becoming president in August 2021, but he spent most of life in the Islamic judiciary and is accused by human rights groups of taking part in gross violations of human rights. He was a member of a death committee that ordered the killing of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, an involvement he has proudly admitted.
The US sanctioned him, along with other Iranian officials in 2019 for human rights violations.
A former prisoner in Iran, Mehdi Hajati and two former hostages, Hamid Babaei and Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was held hostage for two years in Iran announced Thursday that they will launch a civil lawsuit.
The National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), an American Iranian advocacy group is assisting the plaintiffs in their legal action. NUFDI said in a statement that human rights attorney Shahin Milani will represent the three plaintiffs.
Mehdi Hajati was an elected local official in the Iranian city of Shiraz who was sentenced to prison for his defense of the persecuted Baha’i community in 2019. Hamid Babaei, a resident of Belgium was also held hostage in Iran.
Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Melbourne was arrested on bogus charges in Iran in September 2018 and held until November 2020, when she was exchanged with Iranians jailed in Thailand on terrorism convictions. They received a hero’s welcome upon their return to Iran.
A bipartisan group of 52 US lawmakers urged President Joe Biden on September 9 to deny visas for Raisi and his delegation.
"The United States cannot overlook Ebrahim Raisi’s direct involvement in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including the 1988 organized mass murder of thousands of political prisoners, among whom were women and children, by the Iranian regime,” the lawmakers wrote to Biden.
So far the Biden Administration appears to be determined to issue the visas, arguing that it is legally obligated as host nation of the United Nations to allow officials of other government to conduct their UN business in New York.
Critics who urge a visa denial say that “As the host country for UN headquarters, the United States has a general obligation to grant visas to those conducting UN business. However, as lawmakers noted in their letters to Biden, U.S. law authorizes a denial of visas to individuals responsible for torture and extrajudicial killings.” They cite the example of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim who was denied entry into the US in 1987 for his responsibility for the persecution of Jews and others during World War II.
Iranian Americans have organized a protest outside the UN headquarters in New York City on September 21, the day Raisi is scheduled to speak at the General Assembly and at the same time NUFDI will unveil the details of the lawsuit against him.
On the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand Thursday,President Ebrahim Raisi assured his Russian counterpartthat Tehran will never recognize the sanctions against Russia and will strengthen and develop its trade and economic relations with Moscow.
“Our relations are not ordinary; they are of a strategic nature. Iran wishes to expand its strategic relations with Russia and all political, economic, trade, and aerospace areas,” he told the Russian President. Raisi Also stressed that Tehran- Moscow cooperation can “neutralize” the effects of US sanctions on both countries.
President Raisi and his government consider relations with Moscow and Beijing and Iran’s full membership in SCO a powerful tool in overcoming US sanctions and their effects which have hugely affected the Iranian economy since 2018 when former US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) and slapped crippling sanctions on the country.
"The relationship between countries that are sanctioned by the US, such as Iran, Russia or other countries, can overcome many problems and issues and make them stronger," Raisi told Putin in the meeting.
"The Americans think whichever country they impose sanctions on, it will be stopped, their perception is a wrong one."
That is exactly what critics of the Biden Administration policy of reviving the JCPOA argue. Freeing Iran from US sanctions will open a back door for Russia to violate Western sanctions imposed on its energy exports and international banking. Already the two countries have deals for natural gas and oil swaps, which can help disguise Russian energy exports.
Iran has also supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has delivered military drones to Moscow. Recent images from Ukraine show Iranian suicide drones being used in the war.
For his part, Putin announced in the meeting that a Russian delegation of 80 large companies are to visit Tehran next week now that Iran has signed documents pertaining to full membership in SCO.
The Russian President said Tehran and Moscow actively cooperate on the international arena and their positions “coincide” on many issues. He added that many joint projects are moving forward “thanks to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s support.” “We are interested in his further support,” he said.
Referring to Iran’s membership in SCO, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a tweet Wednesday that Iran “acts dynamically, intelligently and balanced in realizing the strategic goals of its foreign policy and expanding its foreign relations” but “does not wait for the JCPOA and the return of the United States to its JCPOA commitment” despite adhering to the talks for the restoration of the deal.
The SCO summit which brings together leaders of China, Russia, India, Pakistan and four ex-Soviet Central Asian countries together will ends on Friday. The Eurasian political, economic and security organization was founded by China, Russia, and four former Soviet republics in 2001 and has since expanded its membership to include India and Pakistan.
SCO approved Iran's application for accession last year at a conference in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in September after many years of a slow process.
In a tweet Wednesday, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who is accompanying the president said he had signed a memorandum of commitments to join the organization as a full member, calling a "new phase" of economic, trade, transit, energy, and other cooperation with the body.
According to SCO deputy secretary-general Grigory Logvinov, it may take some time for Iran to complete the accession procedure.
The Islamic Republic’s police told Iranian media that Amini suffered a heart attack while detained by morality police, denying reports that she had been beaten.
Iran International has learned that Amini was not feeling well and had symptoms similar to concussion when she was taken to the Vozara detention center, where the morality police take all those arrested across the capital Tehran.
According to reports, the young girl – originally from Saqqez in Kurdistan province -- was visiting her relatives with her family in Tehran when she was arrested on Tuesday evening by hijab enforcement officers.
After protest by Mahsa's brother, who was with her when she was arrested, the officers said that they would take her to the Vozara street detentions center for a "briefing class" and will be released after an hour.
Her uncle said on Thursday that his niece’s heart was not functioning properly and her kidneys had failed, adding that her doctors told the family that they cannot do anything for her.
In recent months government and security agencies have intensified their efforts to pressure women into abiding by the hijab laws and several rounds of anti-hijab civil disobedience campaigns have followed.
Patrols by ‘morality police’ have increased on the streets and videos of violent arrests of women and girls as well as confrontations between people and hijab enforcers.
In an article published by the National Post Wednesday, author and journalist Terry Glavin said Ottawa has allowed an Iranian vice president’s son to live and work in British Columbia while refusing visas to relatives of Iranian victims of Ukraine Airlines Flight PS752.
The flight was shot down by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) missiles in January 2020, and relatives of those killed in the tragic event wanted go to Canada for memorial services. Ontario's Superior Court of Justice has ruled that IRGC’s downing of the flight was intentional.
In his article Glavin referred to frequent visits of high-ranking former Revolutionary Guards officials such as former police chief of Tehran, Morteza Talaei, and former brigadier-general Alireza Razm-Hosseini, in the past few years and said Razm-Hosseini was “free to wander Canada’s streets as though Ottawa and Tehran were on intimate speaking terms.”
“Allowing Talaei to freely enter Canada sends a dangerous message; a message that is an affront to Iranians who have themselves sought refuge in Canada,” several human rights groups said in an open letter in February.
Canada broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012, citing its support for the Syrian government, non-compliance with United Nations resolutions over the nuclear program, and fears for Canadian diplomats after protestors stormed the British embassy.
Over the past five years, the federal Start-Up Visa (SUV) Program has been a wildly popular way for Iranian entrepreneurs to obtain permanent resident status in Canada. Since 2015, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has received a total of 3,203 permanent-resident applications from 70 countries via the SUV program. Of those applicants, 615 were Iranians.
Glavin also mentioned the more recently revealed case of Hamid Rezazadeh, Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, Ensieh Khazali's son, who has been living and working in Canada for several years.
Khazali has denied her son's immigration to Canada and claimed he is there only on a short visit for further "knowledge-based" research. This is one of the favorite terms of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who has nicknamed the current year as "the year of knowledge-based production."
But social media activists have provided some evidence that Rezazadeh is running a company in Canada that sells a VPN application called Betternet to circumvent government censorship of the Internet inside Iran. Vice president Khazali is an advocate of limiting Iranians' access to the Internet.
According to National Post, applicants for the visa program are required to show that their business ideas are backed by at least $200,000 from one of a variety of federally designated organizations in Canada that operate as venture capital funds, “angel investor” groups or business “incubators.”
In May 2018, Betternet showed up in the Portfolio of 7 Gate Ventures’ investment, designated by Ottawa as a qualifying venture-capital company, as a VPN that promises access to blocked websites with a capacity to bypass internet censorship firewalls, encrypt data and guarantee online privacy, the National Post said.
Whistleblowers and activists in Iran have also revealed that some other hardliner officials’ children including Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, and former Majles Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel are also living abroad.
Hardliners have used emigration issue against rivals including former moderate conservative former Majles Speaker Ali Larijani who was barred from running for president in 2021 on accusations that his daughter lived abroad.
In May this year, General Morteza Mirian, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces, claimed that 4,000 relatives of “senior officials”live in the United States, Canada, and Europe.