WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th July, 2021) A group of six US Senators on Thursday sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to deny Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi a visa to prevent him from attending the UN General Assembly high-level week in New York in September.
"If the United Nations General Assembly maintains its current plans to allow some in-person attendance, the White House should deny Raisi and other Iranian leaders visas to attend," the letter said.
"Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States - to the same city where the Iranian regime just tried to kidnap a US citizen - would legitimize his repression, undermine America's moral leadership and potentially endanger our intelligence security, given the likely presence of intelligence agents in the Iranian traveling party," the letter added.
The senators, including Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, said the United States should deny Raisi a visa to travel to the United States because he is a member on the country's Death Commission that oversaw the killing of some 5,000 prisoners. The executions of prisoners allegedly occurred without a lawyer and the right to appeal.
The senators also said Raisi was directly involved in the prosecution and death sentences to peaceful protesters during the 2009 Green Revolution.
"Ebrahim Raisi's role in the Death Commissions, brutal crackdowns on Iranian protesters and his association with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should disqualify him from receiving a visa to the United States," the letter said.
In 2020, the US government denied a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to attend a UN Security Council meeting in New York amid the escalation in bilateral relations after the United States assassinated Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani.
The 76th session of the UN General Assembly will open on September 14. The high-level General Debate week, which will see in-person participation of some world leaders, will start on September 21.
