Araghchi accuses French foreign minister of “crocodile tears” after Mahsa Amini tribute: “Your silence when the U.S. massacred our students in Minab”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has accused his French counterpart of hypocrisy after Jean-Noël Barrot paid tribute to Mahsa “Jina” Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody four years ago.

In a post on the X platform on Saturday, Araghchi wrote: “1.5 million Algerians were massacred by France in its War of Independence,” adding that Paris refuses any apology for its colonial crimes. “Stop your crocodile tears @jnbarrot. Your silence when the U.S. massacred our schoolchildren said it all,” he wrote.

Araghchi was referring to the February 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab. According to local officials, the U.S. strike killed 156 people, including 120 students and 26 teachers. A U.N. fact-finding mission recently found “reasonable grounds” that the U.S. strikes on the Minab school amount to war crimes — a claim the White House has rejected.

Mahsa Amini died on September 16, 2022, after being detained by the morality police on suspicion of not wearing the mandatory hijab properly. Amnesty International has said there are credible reports that Amini was tortured and ill-treated, fell into a coma, and died at Kasra Hospital.

Source: Al Jazeera