Iran Focus: London, Oct. 12 The United States Department of State and Irans principal opposition movement condemned a visit by Irans Interior Minister to a United Nations body in Geneva. Iran Focus
London, Oct. 12 The United States Department of State and Irans principal opposition movement condemned a visit by Irans Interior Minister to a United Nations body in Geneva.
The regimes decision to send Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, a notorious human rights violator, as its representative to the Tripartite Commission of Iran, Afghanistan, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva on October 9-10, 2006 underscores the Ahmadinejad Governments open embrace of repressive policies and those responsible for carrying them out, the State Department said in an official release on Wednesday.
It charged that since he was appointed Interior Minister by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2005, Pour-Mohammadi had helped orchestrate a campaign to further restrict the limited rights of the Iranian people.
Pour-Mohammadis history of human rights abuses in Iran includes his reported leading role in the 1988 mass execution of several thousand political prisoners at Tehrans infamous Evin prison, and his involvement, as Deputy Intelligence Minister, in the 1998 murders of writers and dissidents throughout Iran.
Choosing Pour-Mohammadi to represent Iran in international deliberations on humanitarian issues demonstrates the regimes continued disrespect for the international community and for the basic rights of its citizens, it added.
A day earlier, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the main coalition of groups opposed to Irans theocratic regime, issued a statement calling on Swiss authorities to arrest the radical Shiite cleric.
The Iranian Resistance believes that inviting one of the most dreaded criminals of modern times to international organisations in Switzerland to be a betrayal of human rights and the sacred right of asylum and as such strongly condemns it, it said.
Mullah Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi was among the perpetrators of the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, the opposition coalition said.
Pour-Mohammadi was among the principals in the chain murders in the 1990s, in which at least 120 dissidents, writers and intellectuals were abducted and brutally murdered, it said.
It accused him of committing crimes against humanity and described his entry to the headquarters of the UNHCR as shameful.
The Iranian Resistance calls for Pour-Mohammadis expulsion from international organisations and arrest by the Swiss government so that he may be prosecuted in an international tribunal for crimes against humanity, it said.
