widespread discrimination, although they account for less than 1 % of the Iranian population; whereas practising Christians and converts from Islam to another faith risk persecution; whereas other religious minorities, such as the Baha’i or Sufi Yarsanis, also face persecution; whereas being Muslim is a requirement for most government jobs; N. whereas Ebrahim Raisi, who was elected as Iran’s President in June 2021 and is on the US sanction list, previously served as chief of the Iranian judiciary, despite having a well- documented record of grave human rights violations; whereas Ebrahim Raisi’s victory was engineered by the Islamic Republic’s institutions in elections that were not fully free or fair; whereas only 7 out of 592 candidates received the green light from the Guardian Council to run for the presidency; whereas none of the candidates were women, persons from minority groups or those who held views opposed to the regime’s; O. whereas during Ebrahim Raisi’s tenure as chief of the Iranian judiciary from 2019 to 2021, at least three political prisoners were executed, several were killed in prison or died due to lack of medical attention and many in Tehran and Shiraz received death sentences; whereas multiple cases of torture of political prisoners and those detained during protests have been reported; whereas Ebrahim Raisi also served as a member of a ‘death panel’ that carried out summary executions of up to 5 000 political prisoners in 1988; P. whereas Dr Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian national was arrested in October 2017 after he visited Iran to attend workshops on disaster medicine; whereas Dr Djalali has been sentenced to death in Iran on false charges of espionage and faces imminent execution; whereas he was subjected to enormous pressure and made false confessions under torture; whereas medical issues have prevented him from eating properly, resulting in dramatic weight loss; whereas his detention has been used as leverage by Iran in its negotiations with the international community and the Swedish and Belgian authorities; Q. whereas on 12 December 2020, journalist Ruhollah Zam was executed in Iran; whereas he had been living in exile in France, was lured to Iraq and was illegally extradited to Iran to be executed; R. whereas on 12 September 2020, the Iranian authorities executed the wrestler Navid Afkari after charging him on counts he denied; whereas his brothers, Vahid and Habib, remain in prison and have received lengthy sentences; whereas on 23 August 2022, it was reported that Vahid Afkari had been threatened with a death sentence; S. whereas on 27 September 2022, it was reported that the hacktivist group Anonymous had obtained documents from the National Bank of Iran that showed that the Islamic Republic had laundered huge sums of money through corrupt individuals in Europe; T. whereas on 8 January 2023, two Iranian men were detained in Germany after being suspected of planning an attack on German soil with deadly chemicals under the directive of the IRGC, constituting a direct violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and a potential act of state-sponsored terrorism against a Member State; U. whereas on 28 September 2022, the Iranian military fired almost a hundred missiles and launched suicide drones against military bases belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan, killing 13 people and injuring 58;

RE\1270549EN.docx 5/9 PE741.400v01-00

EN