‘Anti-Iran UN rapporteur bribed by US’

The secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights says the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran is bribed by the United States to write reports accusing Iran of human rights violations.

“The money the special rapporteur [Ahmed Shaheed] has received from the US State Department has prevented him from writing anything contrary to their wishes,” ISNA quoted Mohammad-Javad Larijani as saying in a televised interview with IRIB late on Thursday.

“The special rapporteur must not adopt a stance against the country he is preparing reports on, but since his appointment [in June 2011], he has been appearing on various [Western] television networks like a TV celebrity, repeating US and Israeli” allegations against Iran, he stated.

Larijani also said that Shaheed’s latest report, which was issued in February and is to be presented to the UN on March 11, is meant to influence Iran’s June 14 presidential election.

On March 2, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast dismissed the report as unsubstantiated, biased, and a repetition of the Western allegations against Tehran, and said it seriously undermines the UN’s system of human rights protection and lacks legal credibility.

Mehmanparast stated that Shaheed collates the information he uses to write reports accusing Iran of human rights violations from anti-Iranian media outlets and terrorist groups.

Under pressure from the US and its allies, the UN Human Rights Council named the former Maldivian foreign minister as its human rights investigator for Iran on June 17, 2011.