SAEDNEWS: Iran has slammed the United States’ double standards on human rights, which were laid by imposing sanctions against a UN expert critical of Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip while simultaneously rolling a red carpet for the regime’s war criminals.
According to Saednews, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei made the remarks in an X post on Friday, two days after the US announced punitive measures against Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, at the same time when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on a visit to Washington.
Baghaei said “Albanese is bullied and sanctioned for telling the truth & for standing up against genocide, occupation and apartheid. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, a court-certified war criminal, gets a red carpet in D.C.”
He also denounced the US’s “bare hypocrisy,” adding, “Truth cannot be suppressed by sanctions.”
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio slapped sanctions on Albanese, accusing her of having tried to prompt the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former minister for military affairs Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza.
The bans announcement, which coincided with Netanyahu’s visit to the US, came after the failure of a US pressure campaign to force the UN to remove Albanese from her post.
The UN rapporteur dismissed the US sanctions as “mafia-style intimidation techniques,” vowing to stand “firmly and convincingly on the side of justice, as I have always done.”
Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk urged the “prompt reversal” of US sanctions against Albanese.
He also called for a halt to “attacks and threats” against people appointed by the UN and other international institutions such as the ICC, whose judges have also been hit with US bans.
In a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, Albanese called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel and withdraw their sponsorship for an “economy of genocide”. She also presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies complicit in Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Back in June, the United States imposed sanctions on four ICC judges over an arrest warrant for Ntenyahu over his war crimes in Gaza.
