Iran’s judiciary has described the UK’s ambassador to Tehran as “persona non grata” and called for his expulsion, while crowds of regime supporters burned his effigy alongside the British flag.
The moves came after the envoy, Rob Macaire, was briefly arrested at the weekend and accused of “coordinating” anti-government protests.
Placards of Macaire were set alight in Tehran on Tuesday as a judiciary spokesman accused the diplomat of “interfering in [Iran’s] internal affairs” in breach of diplomatic conventions.
“Under international law, such a person is a ‘persona non grata’. The people expect the person to be expelled and that is also what international law calls for,” Gholamhossein Esmaili said, according to state media.
The labelling of Macaire, 53, as persona non grata – an official term that prohibits a diplomat from staying in a country – was not thought to be a formal declaration with legal consequences.
But it threatens to further sour a diplomatic relationship that is already strained by disputes over British citizens in Iranian jails, alleged outstanding debts for decades-old arms deals and the seizures of oil tankers.
Macaire was arrested on Saturday night about 30 minutes after he says he left a vigil for those killed onboard a Ukrainian International Airlines flight mistakenly shot down by Iranian missiles. He is immune to prosecution in Iran under international law and was released a short time later.
He has denied playing any role in the protests that have erupted in parts of Tehran and the country in past days.
Small demonstrations continued to be held at several universities on Tuesday and there were reports of a temporary nationwide internet outage in the early evening local time, raising fears authorities could cut off Iranian networks from the world as they did during a massive outbreak of protests in November.
The arrest appears to have been a mistake on the part of Tehran police, but Iran’s embattled government has taken the opportunity to deflect away some of the public anger it has faced over the revelation it shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet – then denied having done so for three days.
The judiciary on Tuesday announced the first arrests had been made over the accidental shooting down of the airliner last Wednesday that killed all 176 passengers onboard.
Esmaili was quoted saying “extensive investigations have taken place and some individuals are arrested”. He did not name anyone or say how many had been held.
The country’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in separate remarks called for a special court to be established to investigate the downing of the aircraft, which has triggered protests, rare apologies from the government and a wave of resignations from state-run media outlets.
Officials in the country had initially insisted the aircraft had suffered a technical fault and crashed, but admitted it had been shot down on Saturday morning after foreign investigators had arrived in the country and images had emerged on social media showing missile debris near the crash site. Western intelligence agencies had also assessed that the Boeing 737-800 was likely shot down.
“The judiciary should form a special court with a ranking judge and dozens of experts,” Rouhani said in a televised speech in Iran on Tuesday. “This is not an ordinary case. The entire the world will be watching this court.”
Rouhani called the incident “a painful and unforgivable” mistake and promised that his administration would pursue the case “by all means”.
“The responsibility falls on more than just one person,” he said, adding that those found culpable “should be punished”.
He added: “There are others, too, and I want that this issue is expressed honestly,” without elaborating further. He called the government’s admission of responsibility for the disaster “a good first step”.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the hardline military organisation set up to defend the Islamist regime, has taken responsibility for the incident, which occurred about five hours after Iranian missiles were fired at US forces stationed in Iraq and while its forces were on high alert for reprisals.
The Guards’ aerospace chief, Ali Hajizadeh, said last weekend that a missile operator had been told that the US had fired back at Iranian territory and mistook the plane for a cruise missile. He was unable to contact his superiors to ask if he should fire at the target and “made the bad choice”, Hajizadeh said.
The overt and at times emotional claims of responsibility from what is usually a secretive organisation is unusual but “they had no choice,” said Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, a research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
“The evidence was clear and others had the evidence,” she said. “They have tried to play the card of being seen as transparent and cooperative.”
Hajizadeh had said his organisation asked for the airspace over Tehran to be closed before the accident but that “our dear brothers [in the government] didn’t follow up the issue for certain considerations”.
But Bassiri said there had nonetheless been unusually little public sniping between competing factions and institutions inside the Iranian government over the incident. “Where normally you would see tensions and criticisms within different centres of power, you haven’t seen that in the last few days,” she said. “There has been a focus on unity.”
The plane, en route to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew members from several countries, including 82 Iranians, 57 Canadians – including many Iranians with dual citizenship – and 11 Ukrainians, according to officials. There were four Britons onboard and 15 children among the passengers, including an infant.
Iran shot down the plane when it was braced for possible US retaliation over a ballistic missile attack on two military bases housing US troops in Iraq. No one was hurt in that attack, which was carried out to avenge the killing of the Revolutionary Guards leader, Qassem Suleimani, in an American airstrike in Baghdad.
Source - theguardian
