Iran to try U.S. officials for human rights violations

Not that Donald Rumsfeld was likely planning on a trip to Tehran anytime soon, but this is still an interesting development, reported by Mitra Amiri: Iran plans to try in absentia 26 US officials it believes violated human rights, the latest attempt to turn the tables on Western accusations about Tehran’s rights record. Lawmaker Esmail ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Not that Donald Rumsfeld was likely planning on a trip to Tehran anytime soon, but this is still an interesting development, reported by Mitra Amiri:

Not that Donald Rumsfeld was likely planning on a trip to Tehran anytime soon, but this is still an interesting development, reported by Mitra Amiri:

Iran plans to try in absentia 26 US officials it believes violated human rights, the latest attempt to turn the tables on Western accusations about Tehran’s rights record.

Lawmaker Esmail Kosari told local newspapers the Americans would be tried in absentia and their files passed on to international tribunals.

He did not identify the officials but it is likely they are the same people listed on a parliamentary bill to be subjected to Iranian sanctions. They include former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and military commanders at US detention centers Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The announcement followed the U.N. Human Rights Council’s decision to appoint a special rapporteur on Iran.

I’m actually surprised we haven’t seen more of this already. So long as leaders like Omar al-Bashir and Muammar al-Qaddafi are ruling under ICC indictments that essentially amount the little more than travel bans for certain countries, it seems like an obvious propaganda ploy for countries to set up their own "human rights tribunals" to air the dirty laundry of U.S. officials. 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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