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Iran sanctions 26 US officials

25 May 2011 02:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Iranian Parliament (Majlis) has imposed sanctions on 26 US officials, including former defense and intelligence chiefs, for their involvement in the killing of civilians and the torture of suspects in US-run prisons, APA reports quoting Press TV.

MP Kazem Jalali, the spokesman of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on Tuesday that the committee has drawn up a list of US officials to be sanctioned for human rights violations.

The officials on the list include commander of US forces in Iraq Raymond Odierno, USS Vincennes Captain Will Rogers III, former FBI chief Thomas J. Pickard, and the former commander of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Geoffrey D. Miller, Jalali said.

Current Guantanamo commander Rear Admiral Jeffery Harbeson, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and another US military official will also be sanctioned by Tehran, the Iranian MP added.

Pickard is charged with human rights violations over his involvement in the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas in 1993, and the death of over 80 followers of the cult.

He is also accused of human rights violations during his tenure as the CIA station chief in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003.

Miller, who commanded the US prison at Guantanamo Bay between 2002 and 2007, is charged with torture of inmates, while Harbeson is charged in connection with human rights violations at the detention center since 2010.

Rogers will have sanctions imposed on him over the killing of 290 Iranian civilians on board Iran Air Flight 655, which was shot down by the USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988.

Rumsfeld, who was US secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 and from 2001 to 2006, is also on the list for the killing of thousands of civilians in the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is also charged in connection with human rights violations and torture at two notorious prisons, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan.

Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004, and General Tommy Franks, who led the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are also on the list of US officials that the Iranian parliament plans to impose sanctions on.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International censured the US for its indefinite detentions of suspects in Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In October 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a report in which it expressed serious concern about human rights violations in the United States.