The European Union is placing sanctions on seven people and two entities responsible for serious human rights violations in Iran, it announced Monday.
The EU said that the coalition is concerned about the use of Iran's judiciary as a tool for detention. The release noted that larger numbers of EU citizens and dual nationals were detained by the Islamic Republic on suspicious grounds.
As such, it sanctioned the Shiraz Central Prison and a branch of the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz, alongside the seven individuals.
Two of the people listed on the restrictive measures list are members of the Iranian judiciary: Farzadi Hedayatollah, head of Evin prison, and Mehdi Nemati, head of the Fars Prisons Protection and Intelligence Department.
The EU statement said that with the new restrictive measures, a grand total of 232 individuals and 44 entities have been sanctioned. This means that individuals and entities will have their assets frozen, will be banned from travelling to the EU, and will face a prohibition to obtain economic resources from European entities.
Cracking down on Iran
The release noted that the EU banned exporting communications equipment to Iran since it "might be used for internal repression." It also said that the EU had equipment for monitoring telecommunications in place.
This comes after Tehran cracked down on protests within the country and placed more restrictive measures on dissidents and journalists.
The British government also imposed sanctions on Iranian actors on an organization and an individual under its Iran sanctions regime, citing involvement in hostile activity backed by the Iranian government.
An update to the government website showed new sanctions, including asset freezes and director disqualifications, against the Foxtrot Network and Rawa Majid over "activity which aids or facilitates serious organized crime in the United Kingdom or any other country."
The move comes a month after US sanctions on Foxtrot and Majid. The US government statement from March referred to the group as a criminal gang based in Sweden and called Majid its "fugitive leader."
Reuters contributed to this report.