US sanctions Iranian officials over protest-related executions

The US Department of the Treasury has announced new sanctions targeting officials including Iran’s prosecutor general. The US Department of the Treasury said in a statement on Wednesday that it was slapping sanctions on Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri for his involvement in a protest-related execution, alongside several other figures and organisations the US accused of complicity in human rights abuses. “The case of the first executed protestor, a young man named Mohsen Shekari, proceeded with little resemblance to a meaningful trial,” the Treasury said in a news release on Wednesday, adding that Montazeri had “issued a directive to courts to act ‘decisively’ and issue harsh sentences to many of those arrested during the ongoing protests.” The US government has used a series of sanctions to step up pressure on the Iranian government, which has responded to protests throughout the country challenging Iran’s clerical regime with a repressive crackdown. According to human rights groups outside Iran, several hundred people have been killed since protests broke out in September following the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody in September after being arrested by the country’s “morality police”. The US has led an effort to pressure Iran on alleged human rights abuses, successfully pushing for Iran’s expulsion from the premiere women’s rights body at the United Nations earlier this month.