TEHRAN, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Iran will announce the names of American individuals and entities it will sanction for involvement in human rights violations, deputy minister for international affairs of Iran's Judiciary said on Thursday.
Kazem Gharibabadi said that the recent U.S. sanctions against some Iranian individuals and legal entities under the pretext of human rights violations was "a continuation of the same failed policy of maximum pressure against the Iranian nation and the use of sanctions as a tool to achieve political goals."
The United States "has imposed unilateral and illegal sanctions against the Iranian nation, endangering the fundamental rights of Iranian citizens and denying patients access to medicine and medical equipment," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
Washington's sanctions against Iranians are "unacceptable at all and more like a bitter joke" as the U.S. police violence against the black American community is a "systematic and institutionalized racism," said Gharibabadi, who also serves as the secretary of Human Rights Headquarters of the Islamic republic.
"How can it allow itself to claim to defend freedom and human rights in Iran?" he added.
