Several eye-catching trucks carrying billboards drove around New York City on Tuesday, with messages calling out Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his administration for their human rights abuses, ahead of Raisi’s address at the 76th UN General Assembly.
“Ebrahim Raisi must be investigated for crimes against humanity,” and “a government of designated terrorists,” were some of the bold banner messages seen around Manhattan in a video posted on Twitter by Iranian Americans for Liberty.
Here is some video. #UNGA #No2IR #RaisiTerrorist pic.twitter.com/TlxFjMgS4p
— Iranian Americans for Liberty (@LibertyIranian) September 21, 2021
The new Iranian president addressed the UN on Tuesday via video link from Tehran, and dissidents striving for a free and secular Iran used the opportunity to urge world leaders to bring him to justice.
Raisi, a hard-line former judiciary chief linked to the mass execution of objectors in the 1980s, was chosen last month in an election rigged by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a letter to US President Joe Biden ahead of his speech to the UNGA, more than 400 Iranian-American scholars asked the president to call for Raisi to be put on trial before an international tribunal for his role in the 1988 mass killing of dissidents, Fox News reported.
World leaders from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia will not meet with Iran at the UN this week to discuss a return to nuclear deal talks, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell told reporters on Monday.