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On May 14, the Mizan News Agency, affiliated with the Iranian regime’s judiciary, published a report from a press conference in which freed terrorist diplomat Asadollah Assadi accused European countries of “mistreatment” and “human rights violations.” Kazem Gharibabadi, head of the judiciary’s Human Rights Office, whose role includes justifying the human rights violations of an institution with the world’s highest execution rate relative to its population, condemned Germany and Belgium for “their treatment of an Iranian diplomat.”
“During the time Mr. Assadi was imprisoned in Germany and Belgium, the injustices inflicted upon this Iranian diplomat by these so-called human rights advocates were occasionally reported, but very rarely,” Gharibabadi said. “We have tried to expose some of these instances through human rights and media mechanisms. The country that claims to champion human rights has violated all basic human rights principles in its treatment of someone unjustly detained, from the right to family contact to the right to worship, health and hygiene, proper prison conditions, and various forms of psychological torture.”
Asadollah Assadi, a top-ranking intelligence officer at the Iranian regime’s embassy in Vienna, was in charge of a spy network across Europe. German police arrested him for organizing a bomb plot targeting the 2018 annual meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in the suburbs of Paris. Eventually, he was extradited to Belgium and, along with three operatives who worked for him, was sentenced by the Antwerp court to twenty years in prison. As usual, the Iranian regime resorted to hostage-taking to pressure the Belgian government. The Iranian Resistance launched an extensive legal and political campaign, delaying the deal for months. Ultimately, the Belgian government succumbed to the regime’s ransom demands, violating court orders and sending Assadi back to Iran.
During a media spectacle organized by the regime on Tuesday, Assadi claimed “an unprecedented legal violation occurred,” asserting that “an Iranian diplomat with diplomatic immunity was unlawfully detained.”
#Iran and #UNHRC : When Tyranny Plays Victim https://t.co/d7E8zyH65D
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 3, 2022
While accusing German and Belgian police of mistreatment, Assadi added: “My right to communicate with my family was unjustifiably ignored. In five years, I had no visits from my family and was only allowed to speak with them for one year. Furthermore, I had no access to the media or the outside world.”
In the same staged session, Asgar Jalalian, Deputy for International Affairs and Human Rights at the Ministry of Justice, also said, “These are part of the injustices faced by the Islamic Republic of Iran. We have 8,000 foreign prisoners in our country who are not transferred due to the good prison conditions. We provide the best human rights conditions for convicts within the country, yet we are constantly accused of human rights violations.”
While the Iranian regime has ramped up executions to unprecedented levels to suppress public uprisings and continues to harass and abuse innocent women and girls under the pretext of enforcing mandatory hijab laws, it now accuses Western countries of human rights violations, asserting that they “lack the authority to comment on human rights.”
As a result of the Western failed policy of appeasement, the regime, which sent its terrorist diplomat on a mission to kill hundreds of Iranian dissidents and high-ranking Western officials and international dignitaries, continues to engage in hostage-taking and terrorism with complete impunity.
