Rights Groups Ask British Govt to Stop Deportation of Iranian Dissident To Rwanda

A person conceals his identity while testifying before an international people's court examining the suppression of the 2019 Iranian protests (YouTube)
A person conceals his identity while testifying before an international people's court examining the suppression of the 2019 Iranian protests (YouTube)
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Rights Groups Ask British Govt to Stop Deportation of Iranian Dissident To Rwanda

A person conceals his identity while testifying before an international people's court examining the suppression of the 2019 Iranian protests (YouTube)
A person conceals his identity while testifying before an international people's court examining the suppression of the 2019 Iranian protests (YouTube)

Human rights activists called Wednesday on the British Home Secretary to halt next week’s planned deportation to Rwanda of an Iranian former police commander, saying they fear for his life following his testimony to the International People’s Tribunal on Iran’s atrocities during the November 2019 protests.

Justice for Iran, an NGO tracking human rights violations, campaigned for signing a petition calling on British authorities to halt the deportation of the former police commander to Rwanda next June 14.

The petition warned that the witness could be kidnapped by Iranian authorities after arriving in the African country.

“This is an unfair and dangerous decision that must be reversed immediately,” it said.

The former Iranian police commander, also known as “Witness 195” or Bahram, had testified against Iranian authorities to the Aban Tribunal that kicked off in mid-November. Bahram arrived in Britain in May 2021.

He said he formerly led a 60-strong police unit during nationwide anti-government protests in November 2019.

Speaking to the Tribunal via videolink, the witness said he had refused to allow those under his command to shoot at peaceful demonstrators in Iran.

He told the panel about his subsequent arrest and 5-year prison sentence for cooperating and sympathizing with the protestors.

When the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the prison sentence on appeal, the witness said he escaped to Turkey leaving behind his family.

He then left Turkey in spring 2021 and made the dangerous crossing to the UK from France in mid-May in a small boat across the English Channel.

During his arrest, Witness 195 said he was subjected to severe psychological torture at a detention center. He currently suffers from heart problems.

The former police commander also said that the orders to suppress the protests came from the National Security Council, including Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Late last year, Amnesty International said 324 men, women and children were killed by Iran’s security forces during their crackdown on mass protests that erupted across Iran between 15 and 19 November 2019.

On Dec. 23, 2019, Reuters quoted three sources close to the supreme leader’s inner circle and a fourth official as saying that Khamenei gathered his top security and government officials together and issued an order to crackdown on protesters.

It said what began as scattered protests over a surprise increase in gasoline prices quickly spread into one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Last April, the UK and Rwanda governments announced an agreement to send asylum seekers to Rwanda on the grounds of their irregular entry to the UK through the English Channel.



Iran Is ‘Pressing the Gas Pedal’ on Uranium Enrichment, IAEA Chief Says 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
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Iran Is ‘Pressing the Gas Pedal’ on Uranium Enrichment, IAEA Chief Says 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)

Iran is "pressing the gas pedal" on its enrichment of uranium to near weapons grade, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday, adding that Iran's recently announced acceleration in enrichment was starting to take effect.

Grossi said last month that Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it would "dramatically" accelerate enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, closer to the roughly 90% of weapons grade.

Western powers called the step a serious escalation and said there was no civil justification for enriching to that level and that no other country had done so without producing nuclear weapons. Iran has said its program is entirely peaceful and it has the right to enrich uranium to any level it wants.

"Before it was (producing) more or less seven kilograms (of uranium enriched to up to 60%) per month, now it's above 30 or more than that. So I think this is a clear indication of an acceleration. They are pressing the gas pedal," Grossi told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

According to an International Atomic Energy Agency yardstick, about 42 kg of uranium enriched to that level is enough in principle, if enriched further, for one nuclear bomb. Grossi said Iran currently had about 200 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60%.

Still, he said it would take time to install and bring online the extra centrifuges - machines that enrich uranium - but that the acceleration was starting to happen.

"We are going to start seeing steady increases from now," he said.

Grossi has called for diplomacy between Iran and the administration of new US President Donald Trump, who in his first term, pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that had imposed strict limits on Iran's atomic activities. That deal has since unraveled.

"One can gather from the first statements from President Trump and some others in the new administration that there is a disposition, so to speak, to have a conversation and perhaps move into some form of an agreement," he said.

Separately, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at Davos that Iran must make a first step towards improving relations with countries in the region and the United States by making it clear it does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.