Blacklisted Iranian Official Stirs Outrage at U.N. Human Rights Council
The European Union penalized Mr. Avaei with a travel ban
and assets freeze in October 2011 for "human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, denials of prisoners’ rights and increase of executions." Outside the United Nations offices, several dozen Iranian opponents of Iran’s government, mostly from Switzerland and France, noisily denounced Mr. Avaei’s appearance, the 1988 "massacre" in which he played a prominent part and the repression of critics and dissidents.
Iran said that By choosing a major violator as Iran’s voice on human rights,
Mr. Avaei’s appearance was "an insult" to the memory of victims of his trials
and to human rights defenders, said Impact Iran, a coalition of nongovernment groups monitoring human rights in Iran.
But on Tuesday the former prosecutor, Seyyed Alireza Avaei, now Iran’s minister of justice, appeared at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, one of nearly 100 ministers
and dignitaries to speak at the start of its main session this year.
Mr. Avaei’s speech at the council came just as the United Nations released an annual report by
Secretary General António Guterres on human rights in Iran, detailing a wide range of abuses.
In January, the United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, criticized Iran for flouting the international prohibition on executing people who were juveniles when they were accused of the offenses for which they were detained — five in 2017
and three in January, with at least 89 more waiting on death row.
