The U.S. State Department designated two Iranian government interrogators of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Tuesday for their “gross violations of human rights.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement: “I am announcing the designation of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps interrogators Ali Hemmatian and Masoud Safdari pursuant to Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2021 for their involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely the torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of political prisoners and persons detained during protests in 2019 and 2020 in Iran.”
They and their family are prohibited from entering the United States.
“We will continue to consider all appropriate tools to impose costs on those responsible for human-rights violations and abuses in Iran,” said Blinken.
He added that America would cooperate with its allies “to promote accountability for such violations.”
Chairman Arthur Stark, CEO William Daroff and Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a statement: “These men are members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terrorist organization, who engaged in the torture of Iranian citizens during the 2019-20 protests against the extremist regime. Iran’s vicious crackdown against the protests resulted in the murder of hundreds of its own people and the violent repression of countless more.
“The announcement of these sanctions came on the 14th anniversary of the disappearance of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who was abducted by Iran in 2007 and whose fate remains unknown,” they continued. “We join the U.S. government in calling on the Iranian regime to provide information about what became of Levinson, and to release all American prisoners being held in captivity.”
