Iran Conducts First Identified Execution of Prisoner Tied to Nationwide Protests

The Iranian authorities introduced that it had hanged a 23-year-old prisoner on Thursday, the primary recognized execution of an individual arrested within the protests which have engulfed the nation for the previous three months.

The person, Mohsen Shekari, was accused of blocking a avenue in Tehran and of attacking a member of the Basij militia with a machete, in accordance with the Mizan information company, which is overseen by the nation’s judiciary. He’s considered one of 11 protesters who’ve to this point been sentenced to dying by the regime.

The announcement got here throughout every week that noticed companies, retailers and conventional bazaars in additional than 50 cities throughout Iran take part in one of many largest normal strikes in many years in assist of protests calling for the top to the authoritarian clerical rule that has been in place since 1979.

Mr. Shekari was arrested on Sept. 25, and sentenced on Nov. 20 by Iran’s Revolutionary Courtroom, a particular courtroom for political instances and political prisoners, the company stated. He was accused of “moharebeh,” or waging battle towards God, a cost that carries an automated dying sentence.

His execution — together with the velocity with which it occurred after his sentencing — was taken as a transparent sign that the federal government was escalating its efforts to intimidate the protesters who’ve mounted one of the vital severe challenges to the regime’s rule in many years.

Activists, legal professionals and strange Iranians instantly took to social media to sentence the hanging, saying Mr. Shekari was denied his entry to a lawyer by his interrogations and authorized proceedings.

“Iranian authorities have executed a protester, sentenced to dying in present trials with none due course of,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based activist group, wrote on Twitter. He stated that the execution needs to be met with “STRONG reactions” from the worldwide neighborhood, and that “in any other case we will likely be going through every day executions of protesters.”

Sanam Vakil, the deputy director of the Center East and North Africa program at Chatham Home, a London analysis institute, stated Iran’s leaders had been sending a really direct message. “This might signify the apogee of its toleration,” she stated. “Up till now the system sees itself as having proven restraint, however this execution could possibly be the top level to that.”

Iran’s police chief, Hossein Ashtari, stated on Thursday that “the police won’t present restraint in coping with safety threats,” in accordance with ISNA, the Iranian scholar information company.

A closely edited six-minute video, posted by Mizan after the execution, confirmed Mr. Shekari strolling down a hallway with what gave the impression to be a limp. In excerpts from his testimony, he’s seen holding a cigarette or wielding a knife, re-enacting his assault. In keeping with the Mizan report, Mr. Shekari admitted to blocking an intersection within the Sattar Khan neighborhood in Tehran with a companion, named Ali, who handed him the machete and provided him cash if he stabbed a safety officer. The report stated the injured officer wanted 13 stitches.

It was not attainable to independently confirm the official account of the incident.

Sharyar, a protester who was held in jail earlier than being launched, stated in a series of tweets that he had met Mr. Shekari throughout his incarceration. “Mohsen Shekari cherished life — he was ready for his freedom,” he wrote, describing his fellow inmate as a “quiet younger man” who had been working at a restaurant in Tehran when he determined to affix the protests. Mr. Shekari had hoped that his harsh sentence can be softened to 10 years in jail, Sharyar stated.

Outstanding Iranian athletes and celebrities additionally denounced the federal government’s use of the dying sentence.

Navid Mohammadzadeh, a widely known actor in Iran, stated in an Instagram publish that tagged Mr. Shekari’s identify, “Nothing washes off blood.”

“Your silence means supporting oppression and oppressors,” a famend Iranian actress, Taraneh Alidoosti, wrote in a publish, urging others to talk out.

Mr. Shekari’s dying drew swift condemnation from rights teams and authorities officers across the globe.

“The Iranian regime’s contempt for humanity is limitless,” stated Germany’s international minister, Annalena Baerbock, in a tweet. “However the specter of execution won’t stifle individuals’s will for freedom.”

One of many European Parliament’s vice presidents, Pina Picierno, known as the hanging “the primary insane dying sentence carried out on a protester in Iran.”

Amnesty Worldwide said it was “horrified” on the execution, saying it got here lower than three weeks after “a grossly unfair sham trial,” and known as on the federal government to “cease utilizing the dying penalty as software of political repression towards protesters of their determined try to finish the favored rebellion.”

Greater than 18,000 individuals have been arrested within the protests, in accordance with rights teams. Many have been tried by the Revolutionary Courtroom on “moharebeh” fees.

The courtroom is understood for holding closed-door trials and obstructing the proper to a good trial by not permitting defendants to decide on legal professionals or by withholding proof, rights teams say.

“Most are charged in revolutionary courts that lack legitimacy and are disadvantaged of their proper to authorized illustration,” Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer and former prisoner, wrote on Fb on Tuesday.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty Worldwide’s deputy director for the Center East and North Africa, wrote in a report final month that 21 individuals had been susceptible to receiving dying sentences over the protests.

“Two months into the favored rebellion and three years on from the November 2019 protests, the disaster of impunity prevailing in Iran is enabling the Iranian authorities to not solely proceed finishing up mass killings, but additionally to escalate the usage of the dying penalty as a software of political repression,” Ms. Eltahawy stated within the report.

Amnesty cited a parliamentary assertion signed by 227 Iranian lawmakers that known as on the judiciary to “present no leniency” to protesters by slamming them with swift dying sentences as “a lesson” to others. The top of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, who has repeatedly known as for quick trials and sentences, confirmed on Monday that the trials had been being handled “in a really quick time frame,” in accordance with Mizan.

The execution of Mr. Shekari introduced an ominous shut to a few days of nationwide strikes which have put intensifying strain on the federal government. Within the Kurdish metropolis of Sanandaj, a 21-year-old protester, Houman Abdullahi, was killed late Wednesday by safety forces, in accordance with the rights group Hengaw.

Mr. Shekari’s dying additionally got here days after Legal professional Basic Mohammad Javad Montazeri stated the nation’s feared morality police had been “abolished,” in accordance with the state information media — a transfer that has been neither confirmed nor denied by the federal government.

Iran has ranked as one of many world’s most frequent customers of the dying penalty for years. In July, Amnesty Worldwide stated the Iranian authorities had been believed to have killed a minimum of 251 individuals within the first six months of 2022 — the equal of a couple of a day. Rights teams put the toll a lot greater, saying it had now surpassed 500, “the best price in 5 years.”