Slavin: U.N. Report “Rips” Iran’s Human Rights Record

According to Barbara Slavin, a forthcoming U.N. report set for publishing later this week condemns the Iranian regime for wide-ranging human right abuses, including the secret killings of hundreds of prisoners under mysterious circumstances. Ahmed Shaheed, the new U.N. “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” compiled the 21-page report, which details more than 50 specific cases, including those of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi. Slavin states that Shaheed was “barred from direct access to Iran, [and relied on] material from local and international human rights organizations, witnesses, and relatives of detainees.” She adds that “a number of individuals and organizations provided the Special Rapporteur with first-hand testimonies, the preponderance of which presents a pattern of systemic violations of the aforementioned fundamental human rights.”

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khamenei suggested that a parliamentary system of government without a presidential post is possible in the future “if [the Iranian people] feel that the parliamentary system can better choose the executive officials.” Additionally, it was announced that two filmmakers were convicted of conspiring “to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” An appeals court upheld filmmaker Jafar Panahi‘s six-year sentence, while it reduced Mohammad Rasoulof‘s sentence to one year.