Legal complaint filed against Iranian president in Switzerland

Agence France-Presse discloses that an official complaint has been filed against the head of the 13th government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, ahead of his planned trip to Geneva.

Raisi was supposed to participate in the UN refugee meeting in Geneva on Wednesday, December 13, but according to the latest announcement by the United Nations, Hossein Amirabdollahian, the foreign minister of Raisi's government, headed the delegation. He will be in charge of Iran in the meeting.

According to an AFP report, the lawsuit filed against the president in Switzerland by Iranian exiles accuses him of "crimes against humanity; including illegal executions and genocide and torture of opponents" in the 1980s.

This complaint asks the Swiss judicial authorities to arrest the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran during his trip to Switzerland.

The current complaint calls on Swiss Federal Prosecutor Andreas Mueller to ensure the arrest and trial of Ebrahim Raisi "for complicity in genocide, torture, extrajudicial executions and other crimes against humanity."

The legal complaint was filed against Raisi on Monday, December 11, 2023. The plaintiffs of this case are an Iranian dissident and two former political prisoners who were victims of his judiciary in the 1980s.

Ebrahim Raisi was a member of a panel dealing with the political and ideological prisoners, which became known as the "Death Panel". With the decision of this board, in the summer of 1988, thousands of political prisoners who were serving their sentences, or were at the end of it, were handed over to the death squads and buried in unmarked mass graves.

The complaint of three survivors stated that "at that time, Raisi served as the Deputy Prosecutor General of Tehran and was one of the most eager members of the death commission to sentence prisoners to death".

In late September, an international campaign was also launched against Raisi to prevent him from entering the U.S. to attend the U.N General Assembly.

Currently, another campaign is underway which is endorsed by prominent Iranian dignitaries including judges, academics, and former politicians criticizing his presence at the UN Refugee Forum.

In part of the statement of this campaign, it is stated: “We firmly believe that the United Nations, as a bastion of human rights and justice, should not compromise its reputation by extending an invitation to an individual accused of grave human rights violations,” reports Arab News.