Iran’s Exiled Prince Says He Will Visit Several Countries To Seek Support For Protests

According to the French Foreign Ministry, in a phone conversation with her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Colonna called the detention of French citizens in Iran "arbitrary".

Iran often arrests Western citizens on vague charges and uses them as pawns to pressure their countries.

The French Foreign Minister also asked the Islamic Republic to respect international laws and condemned the repression of protesters in Iran.

According to Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amir-Abdollahian once again called Iran's nationwide protests "riots" and claimed that France "incites riots in Iran".

Amir-Abdollahian further referred to the possibility of Europe designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, saying that the Islamic republic is closely monitoring the behavior of the European Union and will make its next moves accordingly.

The phone conversation comes less than a week after a resolution was passed in the European Parliament against the IRGC.

Despite the approval of this resolution, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell stated that the EU is not able to declare the IRGC a terrorist organization at this stage without a ruling from a European court.

Also, the phone call between the foreign ministers of the Islamic Republic and France comes shortly after Tehran announced sanctions against dozens of individuals and entities of the European Union and the UK, including staffers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the mayor of Paris.

An audio file emerged on social media last week in which a man identified as Firouzi or someone posing as him said he had only one wish, to be allowed to see his baby daughter one more time before being executed. He also said he was being tortured to make a scripted “confession” but that he knew he would be executed whether he complied or not. He said he was arrested during recent protests.

Several Iranian television channels abroad reported on the case, including Iran International, with available photos showing him badly tortured.

Then on January 22 Iran’s Judiciary issued a statement and claimed that no one by the name of Hassan Firouzi had ever been arrested.

Its official Mizan News Agency made a further claim Wednesday that Hassan Firouzi, was arrested while fleeing the country.

Mizan also published several photos of the detained man in an empty plane with Qeshm Air logo visible in the cabin. Mizan claimed that Firouzi had faked his arrest and torture to escape from his creditors and carried out his plan with the help of “hostile foreign-based media” and provided them with his fake torture photos and stories.

Pro-regime media and social media are currently abuzz with claims that other cases of dead protester and torture are similarly fake.

The social media account of Iran Human Rights Society which is reportedly affiliated to the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MEK) last week claimed that Firouzi had gone into a coma resulting from further tortures because of sending out the recorded message. It was also claimed that his family had been taken to a hospital to see him for the last time.

Some journalists and social media activists such as Masoud Kazemian became suspicious of the case for several reasons including the leaking of unique and gruesome photos of a tortured Firouzi and his audio file but no records of his trial or sentencing, as social media reports were claiming. There was also no trace of his family and friends speaking about his case.

A human rights activist based in Europe who in December established a Twitter account, Political Sponsorship Iran (@PoSpoIr), as a centralized hub for sponsorship of political prisoners told Iran International that Firouzi case is being used by the regime’s propaganda machine to discredit the international effort by hundreds of European lawmakers and activists to prevent the torture and execution of Iranian protesters.

“Hassan Firouzi has three French, one German, one Canadian and one Danish sponsor because his reported circumstances seemed to be exceptionally dire. Planning this and making his case look fabricated is psychological war,” the activist behind @PoSpoIr said.

“You don’t win all the time in a war. Firouzi’s case, if it is really a hoax, does not rule out the authenticity of hundreds of other cases or stop parliamentarians who are well-informed about the regime’s dirty tricks from volunteering to take political sponsorship of other prisoners or pursuing the cases they have already accepted,” she added.

There are also some people who think a Hassan Firouzi may have really been arrested for protesting, tortured and sentenced to death, and again tortured to say he had never been arrested and had only faked the whole story.

“We cannot confirm, based on the extant information, that whether this person’s life is in danger or not,” Seda-ye Shahrivar, a Twitter account dedicated to the news of recent protests, said about the case while pointing out that the situation could result in “lack of trust and confusion over the conditions of political prisoners” by creating doubt about their veracity.

The foreign ministry announced in a statement on Wednesday that the targeted EU individuals and entities are targeted “for interference in domestic affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran and fomenting violence and unrest in Iran.”

Those targeted include Britain’s attorney general and army chief of staff, several European parliamentarians and European military officials.

The French scholar Bernard-Henri Levy and three senior staffers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which recently published a series of cartoons ridiculing Iran’s clerical rulers have been designated by Tehran.

The sanctions would ban the individuals from travelling to Iran and their bank accounts will be blocked. Those targeted are unlikely to have any property in the Islamic Republic, but the symbolic move will confiscate if there were any.

The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on more than 30 Iranian officials and organizations, including units of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, blaming them for a "brutal" crackdown on unrest and other human rights abuses.

The United States and Britain also issued new sanctions against Iran, reflecting a deterioration in the West's already dire relations with Tehran.

The sanctions are the latest response to Iran's deadly clampdown on unrest after the death of young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in September.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Rob Oliphant told our correspondent that Canada would designate the entirety of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization if it was easy and effective to do. 

He added that the quickest action the Canadian government can take is limiting the activities of the Islamic Republic “through both the immigration act as well as through the special economic measures act that targets sanctions on those in the IRGC who are most directly responsible for the atrocities which they are committing on behalf of the regime.”

Oliphant maintained that Ottawa plans to sanction somewhere around 10,000 former and current IRGC officers who are the most complicit in atrocities, banning them from coming to Canada or expelling them if they are in the country. 

Oliphant added that “We are watching, and we have been absolutely committed to making sure that we get the right people out of the country and not allowed into the country because no one should be able to take advantage of the fact that they’ve been part of the regime; they’ve been part of the murderers, part of the detentions, part of those atrocities.”

In October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada has designated Iran's IRGC leadership, adding that “we will restrict financial transactions with the Islamic Republic of Iran associated with the IRGC and the proxies that support them. These actions are some of the strongest measures anywhere against Iran.”

The West on Monday stepped up pressure on Iran over its crackdown on protests and arms supply for the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the US, the European Union and United Kingdom imposed fresh sanctions on Tehran. However, the EU stopped short of designating the IRGC a terrorist outfit, as the European Parliament had voted last week to urge the block to do. 

The Canadian official noted that “We are in conversation with other countries to make sure we do it well and we do it as quickly as possible.”

Members of the European Parliament as well as Iranians have called on European politicians to declare the IRGC as a terror group, as it was responsible for leading most of the security forces who killed, maimed and arrested protesters. The issue of Europe listing the IRGC emerged in recent weeks as the Iranian regime has killed more than 500 people during popular protests that started in September, after the death of Mahsa Amini in hijab police custody. Many European officials, including EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell, believe that the move is legally complicated and would obstruct ways to negotiate the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal.

In response to a question about the activities by supporters of the Islamic Republic against the Iranian diaspora in Canada, Oliphant said, “I hear the stories of people who have been harassed, and intimidated; people who feel that there are people who are working for the regime in Canada.” 

“What we need is a concerted whole-of-government effort because it’s policing, it’s intelligence, it’s foreign affairs, it’s defense; it’s a series of different people involved in these sorts of decisions. We need to have a one place where people can take their concerns when they have been intimidated, harassed... those things need to be investigated. We need to find out whether Canadian laws have been broken and move ahead. It’s too complicated right now. People don’t know who to call.”

Calling on the Canadians to “go to the local police” if they feel any kind of threat, he added that “There should be one place where people can go to lay a complaint, bring evidence, show it and then it can be investigated. We have the resources now to do it. We just need to put it in a place for public safety particularly by making sure all branches of the government get this work done.”

"The regime is prolonging the suffering of the family and it is sadly typical of that disregard for basic human dignity," Sunak told parliament. "Iran must now provide answers about the circumstances of his death and his burial."

Iran said January 14 that it had executed Alireza Akbari aftersentencing the former deputy defense minister to death on charges of spying for Britain.

"Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death on charges of corruption on earth and extensive action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the British government's intelligence service ... was executed,” said Mizan website which is affiliated to Iranian judiciary.

The report accused Akbari, arrested in 2019, of receiving 1,805,000 euros, 265,000 pounds, and $50,000 for spying.

Britain called the execution a barbaric act immediately after Iran’s announcement and said it would not go unpunished.

London imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Iranian officials earlier this week.

Akbari was a close ally of Ali Shamkhani, now the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

A source close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier provided documents to Iran International showing that accusations against Akbari and his death sentence were aimed at weakening Shamkhani’s position in the clerical regime.