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BRUSSELS, Jan. 23 (AP) – The European Union is set to impose sanctions on Monday against Iranian officials suspected of playing a role in the crackdown on protesters, but will not add the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the bloc’s blacklist of terrorist groups.
The 27-nation bloc has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iranian officials and organizations – including government ministers, military officers and Iran’s morality police – for their violations during protests that erupted in Iran over Mahsa’s death in mid-September. Human Rights Amini.
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The 22-year-old woman died after being arrested by morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Women have played a leading role in the protests, with many publicly removing the mandatory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.
At least four people have been executed after swift trials behind closed doors since the demonstrations began. At least 519 people were killed and more than 19,200 others were arrested, according to Iranian human rights activists who have been monitoring the rally.
The movement has emerged as one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s Shia theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
While EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels will target more officials with travel bans and asset freezes, they will not go ahead with blacklisting the Revolutionary Guards, despite calls on them to do so by the European Parliament last week.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who chaired the meeting, said that would only happen after a member state’s courts ruled condemning the Iranian Guard’s terror.
“This is something that cannot be decided without a court decision,” he told reporters.
European officials are also concerned that blacklisting the Revolutionary Guard would all but end the EU’s slim hopes of restarting the Iran nuclear deal, which has been frozen since the Trump administration pulled out of the internationally-backed pact in 2018.
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg regretted Tehran’s recent actions and backed plans to impose new sanctions.
Iran “is in conflict, not just with the international community but with its own people over the security of its nuclear program, with civil society movements being brutally suppressed,” Schallenberg said. (AP) )
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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