The Connecticut-based Terex Corporation and other companies have been targeted for selling and servicing industrial cranes that the Islamic Republic reportedly has used as gallows for public executions. An activist group is collecting photographic evidence to build its cases.
The regime has hanged scores of people this year, some secretly in prisons and many in the public square. Hangings by crane are excruciating; the condemned are not dropped through a trap door and killed instantly, but are lifted up and strangled slowly.
“Even putting aside the clear misuse of these cranes for public execution, the possibility of Terex’s name being even remotely associated with the thugocratic regime in Tehran should be reason enough to end Terex’s business in Iran,” says Ambassador Mark Wallace a former US envoy to the United Nations and now president of United Against Nuclear Iran.
Dow Jones reports in the Wall Street Journal that Wallace made the statement in a letter to Terex CEO Ron DeFeo as it opened its “Cranes Campaign.”
Terex calls the claims inaccurate and has demanded that its corporate name be removed from UANI’s sanctions campaign. ”We regret that the UANI organization did not check its facts with Terex before targeting Terex in its new Cranes Campaign,” Terex said in a statement. “Terex has had an internal policy prohibiting all new business transactions in Iran for all of its subsidiaries, even if the transaction would otherwise be permissible under U.S. law or the laws of other countries.”
Dow Jones adds, “But the group notes that Terex’s policy allows its foreign-based subsidies and joint ventures to complete the supply and service contracts for Iran that were already in place when the policy was adopted in April 2010. Wallace said this provision undermines the effectiveness of Terex’s policy and could extend Terex’s connections to Iranian customers for years. ‘Terex’s protest rings hollow,’ said Wallace . . . ‘Their current policy allows them to continue to service existing contracts on their cranes in Iran, which are being used as execution devices.’”
UANI says on its website, “Any company that exports cranes to Iran is directly aiding the regime in its cruel persecution of dissidents and other innocents. Please e-mail any additional photos of trademark cranes being used in public executions to info@uani.com.”
So far, UANI has listed the following crane manufacturers as offenders:
