Senior cleric slams West dual policy

“Why these parties who claim to be the main supporters of human rights, remain to turn a blind eye on the countless terrorist assassinations and death of so many people martyred both in terrorist incidents and during the sacred defense in Iran?” Ayatollah Jannati asked, addressing an Assembly of Experts meeting.

Referring to the Iranian Air Bus passenger plane downed by the US navy in the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1998, he said, “Human right organizations keep quiet against crimes committed by US and its allies in Iran.”

“But when we execute homicidal drug traffickers and terrorists who have the blood of many innocent people on their hands, they cry out loud to support them,” he said.

A US Navy warship, the USS Vincennes, fired two surface-to-air missiles targeting Iran’s Air Flight 655 that had just left the port city of Bandar Abbas for Dubai in the Persin Gulf, killing all the 290 passengers and crew members on board. The US officials later claimed that it had been an accident and they had mistaken the Air Bus 300 civilian airliner for an F-14 fighter jet.

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