Iran rejects UN report on 'rights abuses'

Collective hanging in public in the
Islamic Republic of Iran

A recent report by a UN investigator, claiming that human rights abuses in the Islamic republic appear to be increasing, consisted of "poorly sourced, exaggerated and outdated allegations", Aljazeera quoted Iran's deputy ambassador to the UN Eshagh al-Habib as saying on Thursday.

"Its content is absolutely unjustified, unwarranted and unacceptable for my country," al-Habib said. "It also lacks the principles of independence, non-selectivity, impartiality."

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.

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 Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi and their wives, describing their situations as "deeply disturbing".

Karoubi and Mousavi have been under house arrest with their wives for eight months. They have not been formally charged. They say presidential elections in 2009 were rigged.

Shaheed also said that the Iranian government had not allowed him to visit the country while making his assessment.

Habib said the UN assembly's decision to appoint a special rapporteur in the first place was the "result of a one-sided approach and political ambition of certain countries in particularly the United State and its Europeans allies".

"The US as the main enemy ... of Iran spares no effort to manipulate the international community with fabricated and misleading misinformation," he said.

He added that Iran had "expressed its readiness to provide all the necessary information to the Special Rapporteur [for] an impartial, balanced, nonpolitical, substantiated and well documented report".

But that was not reflected in the report, he said.

Habib urged the Third Committee to "rectify and adjust" Shaheed's report.

Source: Trend, October 20, 2011

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"U.N.: Reports of human rights abuses in Iran on rise", Trend, October 18, 2011

Human rights violations in Iran appear to be increasing, with political activists, journalists and others often facing persecution, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, said in a report released on Monday, Reuters reported...