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It
said Shahrooz Sakhnoori, a man known as "Alex,” was the leader
of an “escort and trafficking network of Iranian women and girls
to some countries in the region,” the judiciary's Mizan news
agency reported.
It said Sakhnoori was executed on Saturday morning "for the
crime of human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution.”
Iranian media reported in 2020 that "Alex" had been captured in
Malaysia in coordination with Interpol and transferred to Iran.
He was sentenced to death in September 2021 on charges of
"corruption on earth”, a term Iranian authorities use to refer
to a broad range of offences, including those related to morals.
Two women were sentenced to death two years ago on charges of
"corruption on earth" and human trafficking. However, advocates
said those women were LGBT rights activists and were innocent.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in 2017
added Iran to a U.S. list of countries accused of failing to
crack down on human trafficking. Two years later, the U.S. State
Department again designated Iran as a so-called Tier 3 country,
the report's ranking for countries that do the least to tackle
the crime.
Under a 2000 U.S. law called the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act, the United States does not provide non-humanitarian,
non-trade-related foreign assistance to any country that does
not comply with minimum standards for eliminating trafficking
and is not making efforts to do so.
“The Government of Iran does not fully meet the minimum
standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making
significant efforts to do so,” said the 2019 State Department
report.
(dubai.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com, Editing by William Maclean)
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