TEHRAN - Secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights and the Judiciary chief’s deputy for international affairs Kazem Gharibabadi says the United States is practically violating all norms of international law and its practices must be condemned by the entirety of the international community.
Gharibabadi made the remarks while addressing the 49th regular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
He said sanctions against Iran have prevented the country’s access to essential medicines and medical supplies and blocked the transfer of humanitarian aid to Tehran in times of natural disasters and the coronavirus pandemic.
“The United States, which acts as a global self-appointed police force, is violating all international rights and norms,” he added.
He emphasized that the international community should not accept such an illegal, unlawful and illegitimate approach.
“Given the predictable and costly consequences of sanctions, they should be viewed as a weapon and a means of aggression. Unilateral economic and commercial coercive measures are contrary to the aims and objectives of human rights and are in fact the collective punishment of ordinary people and should be considered a crime against humanity,” Gharibabadi emphasized.
The U.S. unilaterally left the 2015 agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018 and re-stored the sanctions that had been lifted under the accord. Washington’s European allies in the deal—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—have been toeing the sanctions line closely by ending their trade activities with Iran.
Iran has repeatedly denounced the sanctions as an act of “economic war,” “economic terrorism,” and “medical terrorism,”
The Iranian human rights official also said the Islamic Republic is one of the biggest victims of terrorism and thousands of innocent Iranian people have been killed or wounded by terrorist groups over the past 43 years.
He added that the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) terrorist group has carried out the most acts of terror against the Iranian people which amount to crimes against humanity and noted that out of the 17,000-plus people who have lost their lives in terror attacks, 12,000 of them were killed at the hands of the MKO terrorist group.
Gharibabadi said that this terrorist group, with its dark history, has had administrative organizations in some European countries from the very beginning and their agents have traveled freely across European countries and the U.S. without any restrictions or legal prosecution while some of these countries have become a safe haven for the terrorists.
He asked, “How can some countries that claim to advocate human rights and fight terrorism, call a group that has on its hand the blood of thousands of innocent women and children in Iran, Syria and Iraq ... as defenders of human rights?! How can this contradiction be justified?!”
The Iranian human rights official called on the officials of European countries, the European Union, the United Nations and the Human Rights Council to address widespread crimes committed by the MKO and take serious action to prevent the terrorist group from operating freely in Europe and bring its criminal perpetrators and ringleaders to justice.
The anti-Iran cult was on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations until 2012. Major European countries, including France, have also removed it from their blacklists.
A few years ago, the MKO elements were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former U.S. military base in Baghdad, and later sent to Albania.
The MKO terrorists enjoy freedom of activity in the U.S. and Europe and even hold regular meetings in which European and American officials make speeches.