"Critics voiced outrage Thursday that Iran's justice minister will travel to Geneva next week to address the UN's top human rights body, despite facing Swiss and EU sanctions over rights violations.
Alireza Avaie figures among some 100 government ministers and other dignitaries from around the world due to address the opening of the United Nations Human Rights Council's main annual session.
Brussels and Bern have slapped sanctions on him, maintaining that as Tehran's former top prosecutor he was 'responsible for human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, denials of prisoners' rights, and an increase in executions.'
According to exiled members of the Iranian opposition, he played a key role in a 1988 massacre of political prisoners...
'Allowing Avaie to address the Human Rights Council is disgraceful and would make a mockery of the United Nations and its human rights mechanisms,' said Shahin Gobadi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran..."