Two human rights organizations announced on Monday, August 28, that they had filed a legal complaint in France against the head of Iran’s Paralympic organization, alleging his involvement in acts of torture and crimes against humanity.
Two rights groups said Monday they brought a legal complaint in France against the boss of Iran’s Paralympic body, accusing him of torture and crimes against humanity.
Ghafour Kargari, president of his country’s national Paralympics committee for next year’s Games, is currently in France for a meeting with his counterparts from other participating countries, the organizers told press agencies.
The two rights groups say Kargari is a former commander of the Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which runs intelligence and covert military operations in Iran and abroad.
France should never have granted him a visa for the meeting, said Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer for the French collective Femme Azadi and Swedish NGO House of Liberty who brought the complaint.
Kargari’s visit to France is “an insult to all the victims of Iranian repression, first and foremost women”, Daoud told press agencies.
The associations also say Kargari is a founder of the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance Movement of Azerbaijan which opposes the government in Baku.
Femme Azadi and House of Liberty say Kargari “must have participated in, or been an accomplice to, acts of barbarism and torture perpetrated by those groups in Iran, Azerbaijan and more generally in the Caucasus and Central Asia”.
As a senior figure in Iran’s military hierarchy Kargari participated in the conception and the implementation of the groups’ strategies which, the associations said, meant his actions “could also be qualified as crimes against humanity”.
Khalil Wakim, with AFP
