Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei highlighted the responsibility of the judiciary to lead the call for greater human rights and "legitimate" freedoms.
"The judicial branch of government should be at the forefront of the campaign to promote public rights and legitimate freedoms," the Leader said in a meeting with top judiciary officials in Tehran on Monday on the occasion of Judiciary Week (June 22-28).
He said the judiciary's mandate goes beyond the domestic issues and involves defending national rights in the international arena.
"The judiciary is duty-bound to use its powers to intervene in cases related to sanctions, the US seizure of Iran's assets and terrorism charges and defend the rights of Myanmar and Kashmir Muslims and resolutely express its supportive or oppositional stance and let the whole world know about it," Ayatollah Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.
Iran has been involved in a number of lawsuits filed against it in the US to seize its assets over terrorism and other related allegations.
In April last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that some $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.
Also, a jury in New York on Thursday found that the US government may seize a Manhattan office building from a nonprofit foundation accused of violating US sanctions against Iran. The jury in a Manhattan federal court claimed the Alavi Foundation, majority owner of an office tower at 650 Fifth Avenue, knew that its partner and the building's minority owner, Assa Corp, was linked to Iran and helped conceal the fact.
Antagonism between Tehran and Washington goes back almost four decades when Iran's 1979 revolution overthrew the US-backed monarch, which was followed by a diplomatic rupture.
