State Department offers condolences for death of Iran's president in 'baffling' move, human rights lawyer says

The State Department offered its condolences Monday following the deaths of two Iranian leaders, including the Islamic Republic's president – a "baffling" move considering Iran's well-known human rights abuses, a human rights lawyer said.

In a statement, the agency expressed "its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran."

"As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms," agency spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian were killed Sunday when the helicopter crashed in the Dizmar forest in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. Raisi was returning to Tehran after traveling to Iran’s border with Azerbaijan to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

IRANIAN PRESIDENT EXPERIENCES 'HARD LANDING' IN HELICOPTER: IRANIAN MEDIA

Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA, said the crash killed eight people, including three crew members aboard the Bell helicopter, which Iran purchased in the early 2000s.

Raisi was nicknamed the "Butcher of Tehran" for his oversight of mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, which forced Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to install interim leadership for Iran's executive branch.

"He's been responsible for the incarceration, torture, rape and murder of tens of thousands of people over the last few decades," Gerard Filitti, senior counsel with The Lawfare Project, which provides pro bono legal services to protect the civil and human rights of Jewish people worldwide, told Fox News Digital. "Raisi is not a man who will be missed."

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