Iranian Exiles Protest, Demand Raisi’s Prosecution

Iran's President-elect Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a news conference in Tehran, Iran June 21, 2021. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran's President-elect Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a news conference in Tehran, Iran June 21, 2021. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
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Iranian Exiles Protest, Demand Raisi’s Prosecution

Iran's President-elect Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a news conference in Tehran, Iran June 21, 2021. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran's President-elect Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a news conference in Tehran, Iran June 21, 2021. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Supporters of Iran's exiled opposition rallied in Berlin and elsewhere on Saturday to demand the prosecution of newly elected president Ebrahim Raisi whom they accuse of crimes against humanity.

Flag-waving demonstrators rallied at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and other locations as part of a Free Iran World Summit that featured speeches by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, Reuters reported.

In a keynote address, Maryam Rajavi, president elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, accused Raisi of being the "henchman" responsible for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said Raisi's election was a blow for human rights and called for him to be investigated over his role in what they and Washington have called the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners.

In an online address, Pompeo described the Iranian presidential election as "in fact, a boycott and the regime knows it". "This is a show laid bare for the entire world to see," Pompeo said.

Pompeo denounced Raisi as a leader who had been hand-picked by Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei to "inflict pain, frighten, continue to loot, and to plunder".



Putin Appoints Alexander Darchiev as Russia's New Ambassador to Washington

Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS
Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS
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Putin Appoints Alexander Darchiev as Russia's New Ambassador to Washington

Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS
Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS

Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed senior veteran diplomat Alexander Darchiev as ambassador to the United States on Thursday, to lead a rapprochement with that has stunned Ukraine and Washington's European allies.
The Foreign Ministry said last week Washington had given it the green light at a meeting between Russian and US officials in Türkiye to appoint Darchiev, who now serves as head of the Foreign Ministry's North America department.
That six-hour meeting in Istanbul last Thursday, where the delegations worked to try to restore normal function of their embassies, was the latest sign of a thaw between the two countries, Reuters reported.
US President Donald Trump has upended previous policy on the war in Ukraine, opening up bilateral talks with Moscow and pausing military aid to Kyiv after clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House last week.
Moscow and Washington had been embroiled in a series of diplomatic rows
over staffing and embassy properties in recent years that Russia says has strained relations.
Russia has had no ambassador in Washington since last October when the previous envoy, Anatoly Antonov, left his post.

Darchiev, 64, has served two long spells in Russia's Washington embassy and was ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2021.