On Tuesday 15 July, the EU Council imposed sanctions on the Zindashti network, “a criminal group that has committed numerous acts of transnational repression, including assassinations outside of Iran”, its leader, Naji Sharifi Zindashti, and five people linked to the network: Abdulvahap Kocak, Ali Esfanjani, Ali Kocak, Ekrem Oztunc and Nihat Asan.
The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Unit 840, Mohammed Ansari, who “ordered the assassination of journalists critical of the Iranian regime”, and an intelligence officer working for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, Reza Hamidiravari, who supervised the operations carried out by Naji Zindashti, have also been sanctioned.
“Those criminals and organised criminal networks have been responsible for serious human rights violations or abuses such as extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary killings as well as enforced disappearances of persons critical of the actions or policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or of persons deemed to be opponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, the EU Council justifies in its implementing regulation.
See the implementing regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/hw4 (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)