The United States has sanctioned six senior employees of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) service, the US Department of the Treasury said in a press release on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th November, 2022) The United States has sanctioned six senior employees of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) service, the US Department of the Treasury said in a press release on Wednesday.
"Today, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating six senior employees of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the Iranian state-run media corporation that has broadcast hundreds of forced confessions of Iranian, dual national, and international detainees in Iran," the release said.
The broadcaster and its subsidiaries hold a monopoly on television and radio services in Iran and act not as objective media outlets but rather as a critical tool in the Iranian government's mass suppression and censorship campaign against its own people, the release said.
The Treasury Department said in the release that it designated Ali Rezvani and Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, whom it described as "interrogator-journalists" for cooperating with the the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the IRGC Intelligence Organization in extracting and airing forced confessions in the style of documentaries.
IRIB has produced and broadcast televised interviews of individuals being forced to confess that their relatives were not killed by the Iranian authorities during the recent nationwide protests, but died from unrelated causes.
The Treasury Department said it has also sanctioned four senior IRIB officials: Peyman Jebelli, the director of IRIB; Mohsen Bormahani, deputy director of IRIB; Ahmad Noroozi, head of the IRIB World Service; and Yousef Pouranvari, director of programs and scheduling at IRIB World Service.
