The European parliament passed a resolution dated Wednesday, urging that sanctions be imposed on Iranian regime officials for the imprisonment and executions of EU nationals.
According to the resolution’s language, the EU parliament called on the European Council “to consider further targeted sanctions, including freezing the assets of the Iranian regime officials and entities involved in the arbitrary detention and sentencing to death of EU nationals, including, in the event of Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali’s continued detention, either using the current EU human rights sanctions regime against Iran or the EU’s global human rights sanctions regime (EU Magnitsky Act).”
The Swedish MEP, Charlie Weimers, on Thursday wrote on Twitter: “Delighted that EU Parliament supported @ecrgroup demand for sanctions against Iranian regime officials. We will also push for President Raisi to be investigated for crimes against humanity, including murder, forced disappearance and torture.”
The ECR groups is the abbreviation for the European Conservatives and Reformists in the parliament.
The Jerusalem Post reported over the last week that both the Austrian and Swiss presidents congratulated Iran’s incoming President Ebrahim Raisi, sparking outrage among Iranian human rights experts and dissidents. European leaders have shown a scarce appetite to sanction Iran’s regime for its human rights and nuclear program violations. The major European powers, France, Germany and Britain, along with the US, are negotiating with Iran in Vienna about Tehran’s return to the atomic accord.
The nuclear deal would restrict the Iranian regime’s ability to build nuclear weapons for ten years in exchange for sanctions relief. The European powers would gain access to Iran’s markets for valuable trade deals as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal.
The resolution noted that the “Swedish-Iranian national Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali, who specializes in emergency medicine and is a scholar at Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Italy’s Università del Piemonte Orientale, was arrested on 24 April 2016 by the Iranian security forces; whereas he was sentenced to death on spurious espionage charges in October 2017 following a grossly unfair trial based on a confession extracted under torture.” The resolution demanded Djalali’s immediate release.
The Post reported on the Iranian regime’s kidnapping of Jamshid Sharmahd, a 66-year-old German political dissident and legal California resident. Human Rights Watch urged the German government in July to secure Sharmahd’s release.
The EU resolution noted that “Iran has been actively imprisoning foreign nationals in order to blackmail foreign governments” and “at least a dozen EU nationals are being arbitrarily detained in Iran.”
According to the resolution, “Iran is also arbitrarily detaining its own citizens in dire conditions” and courts often deny defendants the right to a fair trial and restrict legal counseling and visits from consular authorities and UN and humanitarian organizations.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran has “the world’s highest number of executions per inhabitant,” wrote the lawmakers in the resolution. The EU parliament demanded that Iran implement “an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a step towards abolition.”
The resolution also called on Iran to “release political prisoners, including human rights defenders, as they have been arbitrarily detained solely for exercising their fundamental rights to the freedoms of expression, belief, association, publication, peaceful assembly and media freedom.”
Moreover, the resolution urged Iran “to properly investigate the officials responsible for serious human rights violations, including the use of excessive and lethal force on protesters; denounces the systematic use of prolonged solitary confinement in violation of Iran’s international obligations.”The European parliament’s resolution against the Iranian regime is a non-binding measure.