France, other accomplices to Yemen carnage cannot preach on ethics: Iran diplomat
An Iranian diplomat has hit back at France for its meddlesome stance, saying a country deeply involved in Yemen’s carnage cannot preach about morality.
Yemen has turned into the worst humanitarian disaster in the world as a result of the sales of deadly weapons by France and its partners to the Saudi-led coalition, Mohammad Sadati-Nejad, who is in charge of human rights issues at the Iranian mission to the UN in Geneva, said on Thursday, IRNA reported.
The remarks came a day after France’s Foreign Ministry said a French national, who was under consular protection, was detained in Iran in May 2020, and that authorities are “attentively following the situation of our fellow national.”
Also, in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accused Iran of human rights violations and demanded the release of Fariba Adelkhah, a French-Iranian national.
Adelkhah, a 60-year-old anthropologist and researcher at Sciences Po's Center for International Studies (CERI) in Paris, was arrested in Iran in June 2019 on espionage charges.
The Iranian diplomat rejected France’s claims of human rights violations, saying Paris was not in a position to comment on the issue.
“Canada and the US, besides France, Germany and Britain, are accomplices to the war crimes being committed against the innocent people of Yemen and Palestine in the hands of their clients,” Sadati Nejad said.
He said given their horrific human rights records which include systematic racism against minorities, the US, Canada, France and Germany are not entitled to preach about ethics.
The Iranian diplomat also said the United States, as the frontrunner in the spread of terrorism and unilateral and bullying policies against a large part of the world’s population, must be held accountable for the crimes caused by its economic terrorism against civilians.
France is the third largest exporter of arms to Riyadh, with Paris accounting for 4 percent of the kingdom’s arms imports between 2015 and 2019, behind the US (73 percent) and UK (13 percent), according to the most recent figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Over the same period, France was the second largest exporter of arms to the UAE, according to the Middle East Eye.
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