April 22 – A United Nations Special Rapporteur charged with looking at the impact of sanctions on countries is set to visit Iran in May.
The UN Human Rights Office said Professor Alena Douhan would be traveling to Iran to examine whether current sanctions imposed on the country were preventing its government from implementing human rights protections set out in international legislation.
Douhan will meet with government ministers, businesses, civil society organizations and UN agencies during her trip and will submit her report to the Human Rights Council in September.
Hardliners inside Iran’s government called for the prosecution of pro-reform politician Faezeh Hashemi for criticizing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Speaking during a session on the social media app ClubHouse, Hashemi said delisting the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization was not in Iran’s best interests.
Hashemi — who is the daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani — has criticized the Iranian regime’s values and policies in the past, and has previously served two separate sentences after being charged with “propaganda against the state.”
And the families of the detained dual nationals Nahid Taghavi, Jamshid Sharmahd, Kamran Ghaderi, and Masoud Mossaheb called on Austria and Germany to secure their releases as part of the nuclear deal talks taking place in Vienna.
The families made the plea in a joint letter which said Vienna and Berlin were not doing enough to free their relatives, or to address Iran’s hostage taking policy.
Human rights groups said several of the foreign nationals had been subjected to unfair trials, and have called for the immediate release of all four detainees.
