LONDON – Following the detention of a number of British Iranian dual nationals and other people with ties to the UK, the UK government has been directed to apply new sanctions on senior regime figures in Iran.
The opposition Labour Party’s shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, called for “Magnitsky sanctions” — a US legal tool that targets those accused of human rights violations, named after a Russian tax lawyer who died in prison in Moscow in 2009 — after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it detained seven people with “direct links” to Britain, thought to be in connection with the country’s recent mass protests.
“The massacres and repression being carried out by the Iranian dictatorship against heroic Iranian protestors wanting a brighter future (are) awful. “Impunity must be ended,” Lammy stated.
“The UK government must implement further Magnitsky sanctions against individuals and organizations complicit in repression immediately.”
Following the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police for incorrectly wearing her hijab, the UK slapped sanctions on Iranian official figures and institutions, including the IRGC, in September.
Around the same time, London placed sanctions on additional regime individuals in connection with the supply of Iranian drones to the Russian military for use in its invasion of Ukraine, which UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly described as a “sordid” partnership.
Later, he tweeted that the UK would “hold the tyrants in Iran accountable” for the regime’s actions both at home and abroad.
Iran has a long history of arresting dual nationals on fabricated national security allegations and sentencing them without due process in order to impose political pressure on other nations, notably Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in 2016 and released early this year.
Conservative MP Alicia Kearns called on British citizens in Iran to evacuate immediately, adding: “This is industrialized taking of state hostages. This is what Iran is now doing. Iran has demonstrated that it will gladly arrest anyone with dual citizenship.”
Lammy went on to say that Iran “must be held accountable for every crime it has committed through an immediate UN Human Rights Council probe.”
Source: Arab News
