The European Union (EU) is looking to impose asset freezes and travel bans on Iranian officials involved in the crackdown on protesters, according to France's foreign minister.
Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini died on September 16 after being detained for allegedly breaching rules requiring women to wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes. It has sparked Iran's biggest wave of popular unrest in almost three years.
Over 100 people have been killed during the protests in Iran following her arrest by the morality police, the Iran Human Rights group said at the weekend.
Catherine Colonna told lawmakers in parliament: "France's action at the heart of EU ... (is) to target those responsible for the crackdown by holding them responsible for their acts." She added that the EU was proposing to introduce asset freezes and travel bans.
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The bloc last agreed human rights sanctions on Tehran in 2021. No Iranians had been added to that list since 2013, however, as the bloc has shied away from such measures in the hope of reviving a nuclear accord with Iran after the U.S. withdrew in 2018. Those talks have now stalled.
It currently has an array of sanctions on about 90 Iranian individuals which have been renewed annually every April.
Colonna suggested the new measures could target repressive regime figures who send their children to live in Western countries. Diplomats say the measures are expected to be rubber-stamped at an EU foreign ministers meeting on October 17.
The U.S. and Canada have already imposed sanctions on Iran's morality police over allegations of abuse of Iranian women, saying they held the unit responsible for the death of 22-year-old Amini.
Protests erupted in Tehran soon after the death of Mahsa Amini. /Wana News Agency /Reuters
She was arrested by the morality police in Tehran for wearing "unsuitable attire" and fell into a coma while in detention. The authorities have said they would investigate the cause of her death.
Iran's supreme leader on Monday gave his full backing to security forces confronting protests ignited by the death of Amini, comments that could herald a harsher crackdown to quell unrest more than two weeks since she died.
Iranian authorities have not given a death toll over the protests, while saying many members of the security forces have been killed by "rioters and thugs backed by foreign foes."