The European Union is set to agree to sanction several Iranian individuals on Wednesday for human rights abuses, the first such measures since 2013, three EU diplomats said.
Illustration: VCG
EU envoys are expected to agree to impose travel bans and asset freezes on the individuals, the diplomats said, and their names would be published next week, when the sanctions take effect. They gave no further details. The European Union declined to comment.
Like the US, the European Union has an array of sanctions over human rights since 2011 on more than 80 Iranian individuals which have been renewed annually every April. Those will also be renewed on Wednesday, the three diplomats said.
The United Nations has regularly complained that Iran arrests political opponents in a clampdown on freedom of expression. On March 9, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, presented a report documenting Iran's high death penalty rate, executions of juveniles, the use torture to coerce confessions and the lawful marriage of girls as young as 10 years old.
Iran has repeatedly rejected accusations by the West of human rights abuses. Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment.
No Iranians have been added to that list since 2013, however, as the bloc has shied away from angering Iran in the hope of safeguarding a nuclear accord Tehran signed with world powers in 2015.
The three diplomats said the sanctions were not linked to efforts to revive the nuclear deal, which the US pulled out of but now seeks to rejoin.