I 
116TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 194 
To impose additional sanctions with respect to serious human rights abuses 
of the Government of Iran, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JANUARY 3, 2019 
Mr. MCCAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Com-
mittee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committees on the Ju-
diciary, Financial Services, and Ways and Means, for a period to be sub-
sequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of 
such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To impose additional sanctions with respect to serious human 
rights abuses of the Government of Iran, and for other 
purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Iran Human Rights 
and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act’’. 
SEC. 2. UNITED STATES POLICY ON HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLA-
TIONS BY THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAN. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: 
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(1) Iran is a member of the United Nations, 
voted for the Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights, and is a signatory to the International Cov-
enant on Civil and Political Rights, among other 
international human rights treaties. 
(2) In violation of these and other international 
obligations, Iranian regime officials continue to vio-
late the fundamental human rights of the Iranian 
people. 
(3) The Iranian regime persecutes ethnic and 
religious minority groups, such as the Baha’is, 
Christians, Sufi, Sunni, and dissenting Shi’a Mus-
lims 
(such 
as 
imprisoned 
Ayatollah 
Hossein 
Kazemeyni Boroujerdi), through harassment, ar-
rests, and imprisonment, during which detainees 
have routinely been beaten, tortured, and killed. 
(4) Following voting irregularities that resulted 
in the 2009 election of President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad, the Iranian regime brutally sup-
pressed peaceful political dissent from wide segments 
of civil society during the Green Revolution in a cyn-
ical attempt to retain its undemocratic grip on 
power. 
(5) Since February 2011, the leaders of Iran’s 
Green Movement, former Prime Minister Mir 
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Hossein Mousavi and his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, 
have been incarcerated, and former Speaker of the 
Majles (parliament) Mehdi Karroubi has lived under 
strict house arrest, ordered by Iran’s Supreme Na-
tional Security. 
(6) In 1999 the Iranian regime brutally sup-
pressed a student revolt that was one of the largest 
mass uprisings up until that point in the country 
since 1979. 
(7) Over a 4-month period in 1988, the Iranian 
regime carried out the barbaric mass executions of 
thousands of political prisoners by hanging and fir-
ing squad for refusing to renounce their political af-
filiations and in some cases for possessing political 
reading material, including prisoners of conscience, 
teenagers, and pregnant women. In an audiotape, 
the late Hussein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah 
who served as former Supreme leader Khomeini’s 
chief deputy, said that the 1988 mass killings were 
‘‘the greatest crime committed during the Islamic 
Republic, for which history will condemn us’’. 
(8) Senior governmental, military, and public 
security officials in Iran have continued ordering, 
controlling, and committing egregious human rights 
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violations that, in many cases, represent official poli-
cies of the Iranian regime. 
(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of the 
Congress that the United States should— 
(1) deny the Government of Iran the ability to 
continue to oppress the people of Iran and to use vi-
olence and executions to silence pro-democracy 
protestors; 
(2) work with international partners to inves-
tigate human rights violations by senior officials of 
the Government of Iran, regardless of where or when 
such violations took place; 
(3) support efforts made by the people of Iran 
to promote the establishment of basic freedoms that 
build the foundation for the emergence of a freely 
elected, open, non-corrupt and democratic political 
system; 
(4) condemn Iranian human rights abuses 
against dissidents, including the massacre in 1988 
and the suppression of political demonstrations in 
1999, 2009, and 2017, and pressure the Govern-
ment of Iran to provide family members detailed in-
formation that they were denied about the final rest-
ing places of any missing victims of such abuses; 
and 
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