A high-ranking official of Iran’s Judiciary says a total of 30 Iranian nationals are imprisoned abroad on charges of circumventing Washington’s sanctions.

Kazem Gharibabadi, a senior Judiciary official and secretary of the Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, added on Friday that government officials are following up on their cases.

He criticized what he called the Western “double standard” approach on the issue of human rights, saying that “the number of Iranians who need human rights protections abroad is not small”.

“There are many examples in this regard, like the sham trial of [former Iranian judicial official] Hamid Nouri in Sweden, the violent mistreatment of a female Iranian asylum seeker by the Danish police in front of her child, and even Iranians being prosecuted under the pretext of circumventing US sanctions against Iran,” Gharibabadi said.

He stressed that “in some cases the follow-up process is lengthy and does not mean that we are abandoning them. We give various forms of human rights support.”

His remarks came as talk of a possible prisoner swap deals between Iran and the United States circulates in media especially since Iran freed British Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori in exchange for the UK paying a four-decade-old £400m ($522 million) debt to Iran.

Following reports about the release of Iranian funds frozen by third countries in return for Tehran freeing Iranian-Americans it holds hostage, the US State Department denied “any breakthrough” in talks on the release of four US citizens.