UN's human rights monitor is a Mossad spy, Iran alleges

Ahmed Shaheed is the Maldivian diplomat who was elected as the UN’s special rapporteur on the state of human rights in the Islamic Republic.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Ahmed Shaheed, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in Iran (photo credit: REUTERS)
Ahmed Shaheed, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in Iran
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The United Nations’ top official responsible for monitoring human rights in Iran is secretly working either for the Mossad or the CIA, the Iranian government is alleging.
Ahmed Shaheed, the Maldivian diplomat who was elected as the UN’s special rapporteur on the state of human rights in the Islamic Republic three years ago, came under verbal attack from an Iranian government official on Saturday for making “baseless allegations” against the regime.
"All fair and independent human rights bodies are well aware that Shaheed works as an agent for the Zionist regime and also the CIA," Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, a member of an Iranian parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, told the state-run Fars news agency.
"The extension of Shaheedˈs mission by the UN Human Rights Council serves to gain time to level yet more accusations again Iran," he added.
Shaheed has submitted reports to the UN Human Rights Council detailing an array of Iranian violations, including disproportionate use of the death penalty, persecution of homosexuals, the arrest of journalists, and abuse of labor unions.
Last year, Shaheed told The Jerusalem Post that in Iran “groups who hold dissident views, whether political or other groups, fall into difficulty on national security charges.”
Human rights groups have long asserted Iran’s judiciary imprisons religious and political dissidents based on trumped-up national security charges.
Shaheed’s most recent report, released in early March, alleges “widespread systemic and systematic violations of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “a situation in which civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are undermined and violated in law and practice.”