Six Iranian and French-Iranian plaintiffs. A complaint against three Iranian dignitaries, including the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, was filed Thursday, September 14, at the Paris prosecutor's office for "death threats and apology of terrorism", announced the lawyer of the civil party.
In addition to Hossein Salami, the complaint targets the Minister of Intelligence, Esmail Khatib, and the commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, Esmail Qaani, and denounces public threats made by these three dignitaries between December 2022 and January 2023 against supporters of the protests in Iran.
It targets in particular a statement by Esmail Khatib on December 13, 2022: "anyone who played a role in the riots [in Iran] will be punished anywhere in the world," widely relayed in the press and on social networks, according to the text of the complaint of which AFP had a copy.
Threats against Charlie Hebdo
It also quotes Hossein Salami on January 10, 2023 warning "the French and the leaders of Charlie Hebdo" not to "look into the fate of Salman Rushdie", the famous British writer pursued by a fatwa and victim of a serious attack in August 2022.
"These threats are so many disguised fatwas" against opposition activists around the world, Chirinne Ardakani, a French-Iranian lawyer with the Iran Justice Collective, told AFP.
See alsoParalympic Games: the president of the Iranian delegation targeted by a complaint for torture
"The regime of the Islamic Republic and its agents maintain a long tradition of death threats, tracking and murdering exiled Iranian opponents on French and European soil," reads the 22-page complaint.
The six applicants, residing in France since the 80s or recently exiled, are filmmakers, journalists, writers or LGBT+ rights activists and are publicly engaged against the Iranian authorities.
Securing France Prosecution of Perpetrators of Abuses
The filing of this complaint, essentially symbolic at this stage, comes on the eve of the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death on September 16 and the beginning of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising in Iran. "It is a question of signaling to the Iranian power, which wants to stifle dissent, that Iranians, wherever they are in the world, will continue to make themselves heard," said Chirinne Ardakani.
"We launch balloons, we seize all the possibilities offered by French law, but the ultimate goal is to ensure that the perpetrators of abuses can be prosecuted and brought to justice in France," she added.
The Iran Justice Collective, an association based in France, has been documenting for the past year the abuses and repression against protesters in Iran, which, according to NGOs, has resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests.
With AFP
The summary of the weekFrance 24 invites you to look back on the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news with you everywhere! Download the France 24 app