“These draconian sentences and now the first public execution (of a protester) are intended to intimidate the people of Iran. They are intended to silence the opposition and simply show the extent to which the Iranian leadership fears its own people,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
The US government on Monday condemned the second execution of a protester arrested during the mass protests that have rocked Iran in the past three months, saying the death sentences show the Islamic Republic’s clerical regime is afraid of its own people.
“These draconian sentences and now the first public execution (of a protester) are intended to intimidate the people of Iran. They are intended to silence the opposition and simply show the extent to which the Iranian leadership fears its own people,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
Majidreza Rahnavard, aged 23, was sentenced to death for stabbing to death two members of the security forces and wounding four other people, according to Mizan online, a news agency affiliated with the Iranian judiciary. He was publicly hanged in Mashhad, northeastern Iran.
It was the second execution linked to the protest movement sparked by the September 16 death of young Iranian-Kurdish Mahsha Amini at the hands of morality police, but the first to take place in public, following the December 8 hanging of Mohsen Sakari, also 23 years old, convicted of assaulting and injuring a paramilitary.
For his part, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres considers the conditions of Majidreza Rahnavard’s execution “particularly harsh” and calls on the Iranian authorities to stop applying the death penalty, his spokesman said during a press conference.
The executions have caused an international outcry.
RES-EMP
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