The State Department offered its condolences Monday after the deaths of two Iranian leaders, including the Islamic Republic\u2019s president, a \u2018baffling\u2019 move considering Iran\u2019s well-known human rights abuses, a human rights lawyer says.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the agency expressed \u2018its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms,\u2019 agency spokesperson Matthew Miller said.<\/p>\n
Raisi and Amirabdollahian were killed Sunday after their helicopter crashed in the Dizmar Forest in Iran\u2019s East Azerbaijan province on Sunday. Raisi was returning to Tehran after traveling to Iran\u2019s border with Azerbaijan to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan\u2019s President Ilham Aliyev.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s state-run news agency, IRNA, said the crash killed eight people, including three crew members aboard the Bell helicopter, which Iran purchased in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
Raisi was nicknamed the \u2018Butcher of Tehran\u2019 for his oversight of mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, which forced Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to install interim leadership for Iran\u2019s executive branch.<\/p>\n
\u2018He\u2019s been responsible for the incarceration, torture, rape and murder of tens of thousands of people over the last few decades,\u2019 Gerard Filitti, senior counsel with the Lawfare Project, which provides pro bono legal services to protect the civil and human rights of Jewish people worldwide, told Fox News Digital. \u2018Raisi is not a man who will be missed.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018While it is understandable for the State Department to issue condolences when there is the death of a foreign head of state, it\u2019s baffling that someone who has such an atrocious record of violating human rights, supporting global terrorism, targeting the United States and allies, is someone who is receiving this outpouring of condolences, effectively from the United States government,\u2019 he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital has reached out to the State Department for further comment but has not yet heard back.<\/p>\n
Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania\u2019s minister of foreign affairs, said condolences to Raisi would be inappropriate given Tehran\u2019s alliance with Russia.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t feel comfortable sending condolences while Iran is sending drones that are used against civilians in Ukraine,\u2019 he wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
Iran, an Islamic theocracy, has long cracked down on dissent from its citizens and has been known for its human rights abuses, including jailing people for dancing, social media activity and women who break the country\u2019s strict dress code.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s no secret that Iran violates human rights. It\u2019s a matter of its practice to rule according to its interpretation of religious law, and that leaves little room for what we understand as civil rights or human rights in the western democratic context,\u2019 Filitti said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He noted that the Biden administration has embarked on a strategy of trying to appease Tehran with regard to nuclear deal negotiations and freeing up billions of dollars that Iran uses to conduct terror attacks and abuse its citizens.<\/p>\n