The Albanese government is deploying a special form of targeted sanctions for the first time, imposing asset freezes and travel bans on 13 alleged human rights abusers including the head of Iran’s notoriously brutal morality police.

Seven Russian intelligence operatives believed to have been involved in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a chief antagonist of President Vladimir Putin, will be hit with so-called “Magnitsky sanctions” under the decision by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, along with six senior Iranian enforcers.

This is the first time Labor has used the Magnitsky sanctions regime since its May election victory and just the second time the powers been used since they were legislated with much fanfare a year ago.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said it was important for Australia to sanction those responsible for human rights violations in Iran and Russia.Credit:AP

Wong’s decision will be applauded by human rights groups, who have grown increasingly exasperated by the government’s reluctance to use the Magnitsky sanctions to punish individuals responsible for human rights abuses.

The laws – named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 – allow the government to revoke visas, ban travel and seize property from individuals who might try to hide assets in Australia.

The government is sanctioning six Iranian officials it says are responsible for the oppression of women and girls and the violent crackdown on protesters since the death of 22-year-old student Mahsa Amini in September.

Amini died after being apprehended by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly, sparking a wave of unrest that has met with deadly resistance from Iranian security forces.

“The Iranian regime’s flagrant and widespread disregard for the human rights of its own people has appalled Australians, and the perpetrators must be held accountable,” Wong writes in an opinion piece published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Saturday to coincide with global Human Rights Day.

“Sanctions are not our only choice, and they will rarely be our first choice.

“It’s about making the best judgement I can in this role, about the right approach at the right time.”

Wong argues it is important for Australia to engage in diplomacy with countries it vehemently disagrees with, citing the recent release of economist Sean Turnell from a Myanmar jail.

Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died in detention in Iran, setting off the biggest protests in Iran since 1979.Credit:Twitter

“But where dialogue does not progress, we look for other ways to send a strong message,” she writes.

“Autonomous sanctions are one of those ways.”

Mohammad Rostami Cheshmeh Gachi, the head of the Iranian morality police, is among those being sanctioned.

The others include Seyed Sadegh Hosseini, a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij Resistance Force, a volunteer paramilitary organisation.

Wong said Hosseini was being sanctioned for “his role in the indiscriminate use of violence against protesters” while the Basij Resiatnce Force had been “implicated in unlawful killings, beatings, and sexual assaults” during the recent crackdown.

The seven Russians being sanctioned have been identified by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office as employees of the Russian Federal Security Service who were “directly responsible for planning or carrying out the attack” on Navalny.

Navalny, who has drawn in tens of millions of YouTube viewers through his exposes of alleged corruption by Putin allies, almost died from a nerve agent attack while travelling on a flight from Siberia to Moscow in 2020.

Alexei Navalny, pictured with his wife Yulia, in Berlin’s Charite hospital in 2020 recovering from poisoning. Credit:AP via Instagram

Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said earlier this week: “One year has passed since Australia’s parliament passed Magnitsky-style sanctions, yet the government seems reluctant to use this tool to hold human rights abusers accountable.”

Then-foreign minister Marise Payne imposed sanctions in March on 39 Russian individuals implicated in Magnitsky’s death and the corruption he helped expose, the only time the sanctions regime had previously been used in Australia.

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