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Iran Dissidents File New Lawsuit against Raisi in US

In this file photo taken on July 19, 2022, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi takes part in a joint press conference with his Russian and Turkish counterparts following their summit in Tehran. (AFP)
In this file photo taken on July 19, 2022, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi takes part in a joint press conference with his Russian and Turkish counterparts following their summit in Tehran. (AFP)
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Iran Dissidents File New Lawsuit against Raisi in US

In this file photo taken on July 19, 2022, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi takes part in a joint press conference with his Russian and Turkish counterparts following their summit in Tehran. (AFP)
In this file photo taken on July 19, 2022, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi takes part in a joint press conference with his Russian and Turkish counterparts following their summit in Tehran. (AFP)

Iranian dissidents and ex-prisoners including a Western academic on Tuesday announced the filing of a civil suit in New York against Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi as he attended the UN General Assembly.

The republic's hardline president is the target of the complaint for his role as a judge in the 1980s when thousands of people were sentenced to death in the country, according to the advocacy group National Union for Democracy in Iran.

The suit had yet to be made public Tuesday evening by a US federal court in Manhattan, said AFP.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic imprisoned in Iran from September 2018 to November 2020 for espionage, appeared by video at a New York press conference and painted a harrowing picture of her ordeal behind bars, including a year of solitary confinement.

"I was subjected to a range of different psychological and physical tortures and was routinely subjected to cruel and degrading and humiliating mistreatment," Moore-Gilbert said.
The litigation "is a step towards justice and an attempt to help victims regain their dignity," former prisoner Navid Mohebbi told reporters.

"I have seen the very worst of what this regime and Raisi have done to my compatriots," Mohebbi added.

The civil suit invokes US legislation protecting victims of torture.

NUFDI political director Cameron Khansarinia said "the plaintiffs in this case, Iranian dissidents, former Iranian hostages, former Western hostages, are coming together in an unprecedented fashion to take a step forward for justice."

He said that the dissidents and former prisoners were "echoing the cries we hear today on the streets of Iran," a reference to a deadly crackdown against protests that erupted after the death of young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini after she was arrested by morality police who enforce restrictions on women's dress.

The complaint is not the first against Raisi on American soil.

In August in New York a civil lawsuit filed by a separate exile group challenged US authorities to take action against Raisi ahead of his UN appearance.

According to that filing, Raisi in 1988 was a member of the so-called "death commission," four judges who directly ordered thousands of executions as well as torture of members of the armed opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, known as the MEK.

Raisi, elected in August 2021, is due to address the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

Earlier Tuesday he met in New York with French President Emmanuel Macron, who said he discussed Tehran's nuclear program and "respect for women's rights" after the demonstrations in several Iranian cities.

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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.