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Iran dismisses UK rights comments

Xinhua, January 26, 2017 Adjust font size:

Iran's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday dismissed the recent comments by a British official about Iran's human rights record as "provocative," Press TV reported.

The remarks by Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi were a reaction to the comments made by Joyce Anelay, the British minister of state of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Anelay voiced "concerns" about the British-Iranian Nazanin Zaqari, who has been convicted of inciting post-election unrest in Iran in 2009.

Zaqari, a project manager at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Iran's Imam Khomeini International Airport last year.

According to Press TV, Zaqari was later found guilty of endangering Iran's national security and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Anelay's remarks are "incorrect, injudicious, provocative" and are the example of interference in Iran's internal affairs, Qasemi was quoted as saying.

The Iranian spokesman warned against what he called the instrumental, political, and propagandist application of the issue of human rights to exert pressure on independent countries. Endit