FILE - In this file photo taken on January 8, 2022, a woman touches victims' portraits as mourners attend an outdoor vigil for the victims of Ukrainian passenger jet flight PS752, which was shot down over Iran, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom have asked the International Court of Justice to hold Iran responsible for the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane over Tehran that killed all on board and provide compensation to the families of those killed.
The ICJ made public Wednesday the filing in which the four governments say Iran did not take “all practicable measures” to prevent the 2020 incident, then failed to conduct a fair and transparent investigation, withheld evidence and harassed victims’ families.
FILE - A rescue worker shows pictures of a girl recovered from a Ukrainian plane crash site in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran.
Iranian forces shot down the jet shortly after takeoff from Tehran. Hours earlier, Iran had fired missiles at an Iraqi base used by U.S. troops. Iran said its forces mistook the Ukrainian jet for an enemy threat.
All 176 people on board the plane died. The passengers included nationals and residents of Afghanistan, Canada, Iran, Sweden, Ukraine and the UK. Most were Iranians and Iranian-Canadians who were flying to Kyiv en route to Canada where many had been studying.
The ICJ filing calls for the court to order Iran to publicly apologize, provide assurances a similar act will not take place, return missing belongings to victims’ families and provide full compensation “for the material and moral damages suffered by the victims and their families.”
Iran Human Rights (IHR) says at least 142 people were executed in Iran in May, the highest monthly total in eight years, amid a brutal crackdown on dissent that the Norway-based watchdog says is aimed at spreading "societal fear."
The group added in a statement released on June 1 that so far this year, the death penalty has been administered at least 307 times, a 76 percent rise compared with the same period last year.
"The purpose of the Islamic republic’s intensification of arbitrary executions is to spread societal fear to prevent protests and prolong its rule," IHR DIrector Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in the statement.
Amid a wave of unrest -- which has posed the biggest threat to the country's leadership since the Islamic revolution in 1979 -- sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in September while in police custody for an alleged infraction of the country's mandatory-head-scarf law, officials have launched a brutal crackdown.
Iran's judiciary, at the urging of senior leaders, has taken a hard-line stance against demonstrators, executing at least seven protesters, including three on May 19. Several others are currently waiting on death row for their sentences to be carried out.
But IHR said the judiciary is using the death penalty in many areas, especially with regard to people convicted of drugs charges, 180 of whom were executed in the first five months of the year.
The wave of executions has sparked outrage among rights activists and many Western governments who have called the legal proceedings against the accused "sham" trials where proper representation is not always granted and decisions are rushed behind closed doors.
Officials have staunchly defended the use of the death penalty, with Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of the judiciary of the Islamic republic, saying on May 30 that those who, in his view, "should be executed" will have their sentences "executed."
"If the international community doesn’t show a stronger reaction to the current wave of executions, hundreds more will fall victims to their killing machine in the coming months," IHR's Amiry-Moghaddam said.
Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda
A photo obtained from the Iranian Mizan news agency on December 12 shows the public execution of Majidreza Rahnavard in Iran's Mashhad city, the second capital punishment linked to nearly three months of protests.
Iran saw a “dramatic surge” in executions in 2022, human rights groups reported on April 13. Tehran executed at least 582 people last year, the highest figure since 2015, according to a report by the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and France’s Together Against The Death Penalty. IHR’s director said international condemnation was restraining Tehran but added that Iran continues using executions to intimidate the public amid a major surge in anti-government protests since the death in custody of a young woman last September. To read the original story by AFP, click here.
Protesters rallied in front of Hamid Ruhi's house on what would have been his 20th birthday
Protesters took to the streets of the Shahr-e Ziba neighborhood west of the Iranian capital, Tehran, late on April 5 to mark the birthday of Hamid Reza Ruhi, who was killed in the brutal state crackdown on anti-government protests sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her detention by the morality police.
Ruhi, a 19-year-old university student, was reportedly shot dead near his home in Tehran on November 18.
Amateur videos posted online on April 5 showed protesters chanting antiestablishment slogans, including “Death to the dictator” and “Hamidreza is not dead, it is Seyed Ali [Khamenei] who is dead,” while also calling for “freedom, freedom.”
Women protesting Ruhr’s killing removed their mandatory head scarves while chanting “woman, life, freedom.”
Reports said the protesters honored Ruhi amid the heavy presence of security forces around his home. Some reports suggested there had been clashes between security forces and protesters.
Ruhi’s brother said on social media that security forces had removed photos of the young man that the family had installed in front of their house to commemorate his memory on what would have been his 20th birthday.
More than 500 people, including children, have been killed in Iran’s crackdown on antiestablishment protests, rights groups have reported. An estimated 20,000 have been arrested.
Iran's judiciary has warned of harsh sentences for those found guilty of crimes during the protests, and so far at least four people have been executed in connection with the unrest.
The protests that rocked the country for several months have become one of the biggest threats to the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution.
Iranian leaders have blamed the country’s foreign enemies -- especially the United States and Israel -- for the unrest.
A girl walks by a mural on a wall that shows the Serbian (left) and Russian coats of arms in Belgrade
BELGRADE -- In the months following Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine last year, hundreds of Russian diplomats were expelled or blacklisted by European Union member states, several of which cited alleged espionage by the banished emissaries.
At least three of these diplomats have now resurfaced as accredited Russian diplomats in Serbia, including two with links to Russian intelligence, a months-long investigation by RFE/RL has found.
A fourth diplomat currently at the Russian Embassy in Belgrade left his post at Moscow's embassy in Helsinki two months after Finland announced it was expelling Russian diplomats in response to the Ukraine invasion.
Russia has boosted its diplomatic presence in Serbia since the wave of expulsions by EU countries last year, with a total of 62 accredited diplomats compared to 54 in March 2022, an analysis of diplomatic rosters maintained by the Serbian Foreign Ministry shows.
Unlike most European countries, Serbia has not imposed sanctions on Moscow after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the war against Ukraine that entered its second year last month.
While Serbia aspires to join the European Union, the government of President Aleksandar Vucic has sought to maintain its traditionally strong ties with Russia, which shares its Orthodox Christian heritage and has backed Belgrade in multiple disputes with the West.
Russia is among the countries that does not recognize Kosovo's independence and has supported Serbia's efforts to block Kosovo's membership in international institutions.
Now, at least one expelled Russian diplomat linked to a Federal Security Service (FSB) unit accused of cyberattacks targeting the U.S. energy sector has been posted to Belgrade, as has a second linked to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, RFE/RL has found.
From Hackers To Diplomats
On April 11, 2022, Croatia announced it was expelling 18 Russian diplomats and six support staff from the Russian Embassy in Zagreb, citing its “strongest condemnation of the brutal aggression against Ukraine.”
Among the diplomats expelled by Croatia was Aleksei Ivanenko, who served as the Russian Embassy’s second secretary, according to a list of the expelled officials that RFE/RL obtained from a source in European diplomatic circles.
His move to Serbia, together with his wife, Yekaterina, came with a promotion to first secretary at the Belgrade embassy.
Protesters demonstrate in front of the Russian Embassy in Zagreb on February 24, 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Around a decade prior to his expulsion from Croatia, Ivanenko was working in another sector of the Russian state, according to a leaked database of Russian government records reviewed by RFE/RL.
The leaked database shows that Ivanenko worked as an “engineer” for Military Unit 71330, another name for the Russian FSB’s Center 16. The affiliation of Military Unit 71330 with the FSB is confirmed by open sources that include Russian court records.
Around two weeks before Croatia announced the expulsion of the 18 Russian diplomats in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. authorities unsealed indictments of three Russian intelligence officers working for Center 16 accused of hacking U.S. nuclear companies and others for nearly six years.
Four months after Ivanenko and other Russian diplomats were expelled by Zagreb, U.S. Cyber Command sent employees to Croatia “to hunt for malicious cyber activity on partner networks.”
Ivanenko’s wife, Yekaterina, has been a professional viola player with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
In 2015, a friend of Yekaterina Ivanenko posted a photo of her, a young girl, and a man embracing them at a Russian cultural center in New Delhi. Facial-recognition software shows that the man in that photo is, with high probability, the same man photographed in January 2023 at an Orthodox religious celebration in Serbia together with a diplomat from the Russian Embassy.
Facial-recognition software shows that the man (in red square, left) photographed at a January 2023 religious event in Serbia is with high probability the same man in a 2015 social-media photo together with Yekaterina Ivanenko, the wife of Russian diplomat Aleksei Ivanenko. The man next to him at the religious event is Vladlen Zelenin, a diplomat at the Russian Embassy in Belgrade.
The Croatian Foreign Ministry did not respond to RFE/RL’s request for comment. RFE/RL sent a request for comment via Facebook message to Yekaterina Ivanenko, who did not respond and blocked the reporter who sent it.
House Of Spies
In March 2022, Poland announced it would expel 45 alleged Russian intelligence officers posing as diplomats that Warsaw deemed "a threat to the interests and security of our country" and accused of working to "undermine the stability of Poland and its allies."
Poland did not publicly identify any of the targeted officials. But among the diplomats whose names disappeared from the website of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw shortly after the Polish announcement was Mikhail Generalov.
On the day of the Polish announcement, Generalov, 39, was still listed as a counselor at the Warsaw embassy. Poland gave the expelled Russian diplomats five days to leave town, and by April 1, Generalov's name had already been removed along with those of 43 other Russian diplomats stationed in Warsaw, an archived version of the embassy's website shows.
A Polish official familiar with the matter but who was not authorized to speak on the record confirmed to RFE/RL that Generalov had been expelled from Poland following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Generalov quickly found a new posting, however. Six months later, he had already joined the Russian Embassy in Belgrade as a counselor.
The rosters of diplomatic missions maintained by the Serbian Foreign Ministry show that Generalov assumed that position as early as September 2022 and remained in that post as recently as February 2023, according to the latest available list.
RFE/RL was able to independently link Generalov to Russia's intelligence apparatus. Leaked databases of Moscow real-estate records list Generalov's residence as an apartment in a complex located on Vilnius Street in southwestern Moscow.
That complex was built specifically for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) under a 2001 decree by Moscow's mayor at the time, Yury Luzkhov. In 2011, links between the residence and Russian intelligence surfaced in news reports after an SVR colonel fell to his death from the window of his apartment there.
The website of the Russian Embassy school in Warsaw noted a February 2017 visit by Generalov, whom it described as the embassy's second secretary.
Mikhail Generalov (right) speaks to a group of students at the Russian Embassy school in Warsaw in 2017. Inset: an Instagram profile photo of Generalov.
The Polish Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the personal details of the Russian diplomats expelled from the country. The Serbian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
RFE/RL reached out for comment to Generalov via his account on the Russian social-networking site VK, which indicated the message had been read, but received no response.
Helsinki And The Hague
At least one other diplomat currently serving at the Russian Embassy in Belgrade was blacklisted by the Netherlands along with other Russian diplomats that the Dutch government called Russian intelligence officers.
The diplomat, Dmitry Barabin, has served as second secretary at the Russian Embassy in Belgrade since at least September.
A month after Russia's invasion, the Dutch government announced in March 2022 that it was expelling 17 Russian intelligence officers "because of the threat to national security posed by this group."
An Instagram photo of Russian diplomat Dmitry Barabin, who was blacklisted by the Netherlands and has since been posted to the Russian Embassy in Belgrade.
Barabin was not among those expelled from the Netherlands, but rather was barred from entering the country before he could assume his post at the Russian Embassy in The Hague, according to an October 2022 investigation by Dossier Center, an investigative group funded by exiled Kremlin critic and Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in collaboration with De Tijd, NOS.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry declined to comment when contacted by RFE/RL.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said last month ahead of the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine that the Netherlands had decided to limit the number of Russian diplomats, citing Moscow's "continued attempts to place intelligence officers in the Netherlands under diplomatic cover."
While Barabin, 38, and his wife have an active social media presence, open-source information about his diplomatic career is sparse. Reporters were unable to identify any diplomatic position he had occupied prior to his tenure in Belgrade.
RFE/RL contacted Barabin for comment via his VK account, which indicated the inquiry had been read, but did not receive a response. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on its diplomatic personnel in Belgrade.
Barabin's father previously served as the head of a Russian Defense Ministry institute specializing in cartography.
A fourth Russian diplomat currently stationed in Belgrade left his post in an EU country following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The diplomat, Pyotr Dolgoshein, is listed as a counselor at Moscow's embassy in the Serbian capital. Until the summer of 2022, Dolgoshein had served as second secretary at the Russian Embassy in Helsinki.
The Finnish government announced in April 2022 that it would expel two Russian diplomats and had refused a visa extension for a third in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine "and the security situation in Europe."
It's unclear whether Dolgoshein was among the Russian diplomats referred to in the Finnish government's statement.
He remained among the 61 names of Russian diplomatic personnel listed on the Helsinki embassy's website two months after Finland announced the expulsions, though that page said it had been last updated in October 2021.
A photo posted to social media of Russian diplomat Pyotr Dolgoshein, currently posted to the Russian Embassy in Belgrade, in front of the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, where he served until the summer of 2022.
By August 2022, the total number of names on that list was reduced by three, and Dolgoshein was missing along with more than 10 other Russian diplomats who were on the list from June of that year. Precisely which ones were expelled and which were simply rotated out of Finland remains unclear.
Dolgoshein's move from Finland to Serbia is reflected in posts on VK, where he maintained at least one pseudonymous account. In February 2021, he posted a selfie of himself in front of the Finnish presidential palace. In December, he published photographs from the Temple of St. Sava in Belgrade.
Both the Finnish Foreign Ministry and the Finnish Embassy in Belgrade declined to comment.
Dolgoshein, whom social media posts show as a wakeboarding enthusiast, was listed as an official representative of the Russian Interior Ministry in Finland. Records also show he served two tours with a Russian peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo.
Dolgoshein did not respond to a request for comment sent to his VK account.
RFE/RL's Balkan Service sought comments on the new Russian diplomats in Belgrade from the Serbian government and the Foreign Ministry, as well as Vucic's office, but did not receive any responses in time for publication.
'Brotherly And Friendly Country'
The Russian Embassy in Belgrade has previously been ensnared in spy kerfuffles. In November 2019, the Serbian government said it had uncovered a Russian spy network linked to the embassy, prompting Vucic to summon the Russian ambassador.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Vucic, however, played down the incident. "We will not change our policy towards Russia, which we see as a brotherly and friendly country...but we will strengthen our own intelligence defenses," he said.
Nikola Lunic, a former Serbian military diplomat who now heads the Belgrade-based Council for Strategic Policies, told RFE/RL's Balkan Service that Serbia might hamper its own EU aspirations by granting "diplomatic refuge" to expelled Russian diplomats.
"Serbia's move like this could be perceived in the West as diplomatic and possibly intelligence support for overall Russian war efforts [in Ukraine]," Lunic said.
He noted that intelligence services, as a rule, "use diplomatic privileges in order to carry out their intelligence tasks unhindered, with diplomatic immunity."
"It is obvious that at this moment Serbia is the last refuge in Europe for the safe intelligence work of Russian operatives," Lunic said.
Rikard Jozwiak, Andrei Soshnikov, and Mike Eckel contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken speaks during a Security Council meeting concerning the war in
Ukraine at United Nations headquarters in New York on Feb. 24, 2023. (Michael
M. Santiago/Getty Images)
U.S. Secretary of State
Antony Blinkin announced that his department is imposing sanctions against 39
entities believed to be assisting Iranian clients in illegally engaging in
trade.
The U.S. State
Department’s March 9 announcement outlined sanctions against dozens of “shadow
banking” entities spread across several countries that would be subjected to
the sanctions due to affiliation with Iranian groups.
According to a press release, these
“multi-jurisdictional illicit finance systems” give sanctioned Iranian firms
access to the global financial system and let them conceal their business
dealings with overseas clients.
The sanctions will be
carried out by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control (OFAC) and will display the United States’ commitment to enforcing
sanctions on the Iranian government and disrupting the overseas networks that
it uses to get around the sanctions, the release said.
Front
Companies Used
In order to facilitate
commerce on behalf of their Iranian clients and assist them in avoiding U.S.
sanctions, Iranian currency exchange businesses establish front companies
abroad. The Iranian government has made tens of billions of dollars from businesses
using these networks in a range of industries.
The U.S. State Department
asserted that they plan to keep up its efforts to thwart attempts to circumvent
its sanctions.
The Treasury Department
cited the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. (PGPICC) and
Triliance Petrochemical Co., Ltd. (Triliance) as two of the organizations being
used to obfuscate United States trade sanctions.
“Iran cultivates complex
sanctions evasion networks where foreign buyers, exchange houses, and dozens of
front companies cooperatively help sanctioned Iranian companies to continue to
trade,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo, according to the
Department of Tereasury’s press release.
“Today’s action
demonstrates the United States’ commitment to enforcing our sanctions and our
ability to disrupt Iran’s foreign financial networks, which it uses to launder
funds.”
Iranian
Presence in Latin America
Iran has been in the headlines
in recent days since it was discovered that they have docked warships off the
coast of Brazil, as The Epoch Times previously reported.
People rest while the Iranian warship IRIS
Makran sails on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Feb. 27, 2023. (Carl De
Souza/AFP via Getty Images)
The event, which took
place between Feb. 26 and March 4 and sparked controversy among democratic
nations in the region.
The presence of the warships,
according to political and security sources, is a result of a new wave of
leftist politicians that has swept across Latin America in recent years,
including Brazil’s new president.
According to
commentators, Iran appears to be delivering on its promise to moor warships in
the Panama Canal by the end of 2023.
Brazil’s former minister
of foreign affairs, Ernesto Araujo, told The Epoch Times, “The big picture here
doesn’t look good.”
Washington, DC – The United States has imposed a new round of Iran sanctions, targeting the country’s oil and petrochemical sales, as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran continues to stall.
The measures announced on Thursday come weeks after US media reports said Washington and Tehran were working on a prisoner exchange deal.
“The United States is committed to significantly reducing Iranian energy exports and will sanction those facilitating Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical trade,” the State Department said.
The sanctions hit a Vietnam-based company, two firms based in China, two others in Iran and one in the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of involvement “in the transport or sale” of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.
The measures block the entities’ assets in the US and restrict other companies from doing business with them.
“These designations underscore our continued efforts to enforce our sanctions against Iran,” the State Department said. “We will not hesitate to take action against those who try to circumvent our sanctions.”
Iran has faced an enormous amount of US sanctions since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump nixed a multilateral nuclear deal that saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting international sanctions against its economy.
US President Joe Biden, who was vice president when the 2015 agreement was originally signed, has promised to revive the pact. But numerous rounds of indirect talks over the past two years have failed to restore the nuclear deal.
While Washington often reiterates it will never allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, US officials have recently said they are no longer focused on the nuclear talks, as they address other issues related to Tehran, which denies seeking nuclear arms.
US-Iranian relations have been further complicated by a crackdown on anti-government protests in Iran and Washington’s allegations that Tehran supplied Russia with drones that Moscow used against Ukraine.
“We want to see a durable, lasting resolution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear programme,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday.
“We continue to believe that diplomacy is the most effective way to achieve that but every time we’ve been asked, we have been very clear that we will, through all means necessary, ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.”
Meanwhile, Iran has accused the US of showing “bad faith” in the talks to negotiate a prisoner swap.
But Washington says it will do everything possible to secure the release of three of its citizens imprisoned in Iran.
“Iran unjustly detains citizens of the US and other countries around the world as an inexcusable tactic to gain political leverage, so for them to claim that the United States has somehow shown ‘bad faith’ in pursuing the release of our citizens is beyond the pale,” a State Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera last month.
