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Regardless of US sanctions, Iran’s president plans to visit New York next month. PHOTO/Reuters
“Preliminary plans have been made for the President’s presence at the UN General Assembly session,” said Iranian Government Spokesperson, Ali Bahadori-Jahromi in a weekly press conference, Tuesday (2/8/2022), as quoted by AFP. The United Nations General Assembly opens in New York on September 13.
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Raisi, who has been under US sanctions since November 2019 for “engagement in serious human rights violations”, did not attend the General Assembly last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A pre-recorded video of his speech was played to the meeting instead.
When Washington added her name to the blacklist of Iranian officials, Raisi was still the head of the court. He only assumed the presidency of Iran in June 2021. Washington accused him of playing a major role in the mass executions of detained leftists in 1988, when he was chief prosecutor of Tehran’s revolutionary tribunal.
Raisi has denied the allegations on two occasions – in 2018 and 2020 – insisting he played no role in the executions, though he praised orders he said were handed down by the Islamic republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to continue the purge.
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Meanwhile, Iran has reportedly arrested several members of the Baha’i religion on spying charges, authorities say. It is the latest signal of a tightening crackdown across the Islamic Republic as it faces international pressure over its tattered nuclear deal.
The Baha’is demand their release and call their arrest part of a long pattern of persecution by Iran’s Shia theocracy.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said in a statement that the suspects were linked to a Baha’i center in Israel and had collected and transferred information there.
The Baha’i international governing body, the Universal House of Justice, has long been headquartered in Haifa, Israel. Baha’is have been there since before the founding of the state of Israel, which Tehran views as its main enemy in the region.
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