Iran carried out on Saturday (7) two more death sentences against participants in the wave of protests that spread across the country last year. Mohammad Mehdi Karami, 22, and Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini, 39, had been convicted of murdering a member of the Basij, a volunteer militia affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
With this, the number of protesters executed by Justice rises to four. Another 2 defendants received capital punishment for the same case by the Iranian Supreme Court, 2 can appeal the decision, and 6 are awaiting a new trial.
Amnesty International said last month that Iranian authorities advocated the same fate for at least 26 others involved in the protests. The organization alleges that the state has denied all of them the right to an adequate defense by preventing them from hiring their own lawyers, and accuses the trials of being bogus, “intended to intimidate participants in the popular uprising that shook Iran”.
The regime is still accused of having tortured and forcibly extracted confessions from both convicts, which it denies. Hosseini’s lawyer, Ali Sharifzadeh Ardakani, said his client was tied hand and foot and beaten on the head until he passed out, in addition to receiving electric shocks to different parts of his body.
The biggest wave of protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution was triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in September in custody of the moral police, responsible for enforcing the regime’s strict religious codes of conduct.
Amini was arrested for allegedly incorrectly wearing the hijab, the Islamic headscarf. The official version is that she died as a result of previous health problems, but family members and activists say that she was attacked and killed by agents while she was arrested.
On Friday (6), the human rights group Hrana claimed that 517 demonstrators were killed during the protests – 70 of them minors –, while 68 members of the security forces died. The official numbers are 300 deaths adding the two groups.
Since the demonstrations began, Iranian authorities have accused foreign forces, including the United States, of fueling the protests. According to Iran, Washington is using the demonstrations to try to destabilize the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The first execution related to the acts took place on 8 December. Mohsen Shekari, 23, was convicted of stabbing a Basij member with a machete, setting fire to a garbage can and endangering public safety. The second execution took place days later, in Mashad, in a public crane hanging. Majid Reza Rahnavard, 23, then detained less than a month ago, had been accused of stabbing to death two members of the same militia and wounding four others.
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