Iran has criticised a report by a UN investigator that said human rights abuses in the Islamic republic appear to be increasing, blaming the US and Europe for the negative assessment of his country.
In his report to the UN General Assembly, published earlier this week, Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said hundreds of prisoners have been secretly executed in the Islamic republic.
Eshagh al-Habib, Iran’s deputy ambassador to the UN, said on Thursday that the report consisted of “poorly sourced, exaggerated and outdated allegations”.
“Its content is absolutely unjustified, unwarranted and unacceptable for my country,” he said.
“It also lacks the principles of independence, non-selectivity, impartiality.”
Among the alleged abuses by the Iranian justice system that the report listed were “torture, cruel, or degrading treatment of detainees, the imposition of the death penalty in the absence of proper judicial safeguards, [and] the status of women”.
According to Amnesty International, Iran had the second highest number of executions in the world last year.
The report also criticised the detention conditions of, and denial of rights to, Iranian opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi and their wives, describing their situations as “deeply disturbing”.
Karoubi and Mousavi have been under house arrest with …
