A legal complaint has been filed in US court last week against Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi for crimes against humanity and genocide, National Council of Resistance of Iran Washington Office Deputy Director Alireza Jafarzadeh said on Thursday.
"It would be the first time a court is a building a case... about crimes against humanity carried out by the regime's president, Raisi," Jafarzadeh, whose organization facilitated the complaint, said during a press conference.
Jafarzadeh explained the complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York under the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act .
Raisi has planned to visit a Western country - the United States - for the first time by attending the UN General Assembly in September, Jafarzadeh said.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran has called on the UN General Assembly to hold Raisi accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide, saying that treating the Iranian president any different would run counter to the fundamental principles of the United Nations.
Another representative of the organization, Soona Samsami, said during the press conference that Raisi was Deputy Prosecutor and a member of Tehran's Death Commission in 1988 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa to execute all members and sympathizers of the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK). As a result of the fatwa, 30,000 political prisoners, the vast majority of whom were affiliated with MEK, were hanged within three months, she said.
Samsami also said that Raisi served as a so-called Judiciary Chief in 2019, during which time he personally oversaw the execution of at least 1,500 people during and after the November 2019 uprising.
Since Raisi assumed the presidency last year, 582 people have been executed in Iran, double the number in 2020, she added. (ANI/Sputnik)
( With inputs from ANI )
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