UN rights body deplores Iran crackdown, establishes probe

BERLIN (AP) — The U.N. Human Rights Council has voted to condemn the bloody crackdown on peaceful protests in Iran and create an independent fact-finding mission to investigate alleged abuses, particularly those committed against women and children. A resolution put forward by Germany and Iceland was backed by 25 nations Thursday, including the United States and many European, Latin American, Asian and African nations. Six countries opposed the move — China, Pakistan, Cuba, Eritrea, Venezuela and Armenia — while 16 abstained. The U.N.’s top rights official had earlier appealed to Iran’s government to halt the crackdown against protesters, but Tehran’s envoy at a special Human Rights Council on the country’s “deteriorating” rights situation blasted the initiative as “politically motivated.”