First Time, Iran Executes Prisoners Arrested in Demonstrations

TEHERAN – Iran said it had executed a prisoner convicted of crimes allegedly committed during the ongoing nationwide protests in the country on Thursday (8/12/2022). This is the first death sentence carried out by Tehran.

Iran’s Mizan news agency reported the execution of the man, identified as Mohsen Shekari. The man is accused of blocking a road in Tehran and attacking a member of the security forces with a machete. The troop member needed stitches for his wound.

The Mizan report also alleged that Shekari said he had been offered money by an acquaintance of his to attack security forces. The Iranian government has for months been trying to allege – without providing evidence – that foreign countries have fomented unrest in the country, rather than angered Iranians by the collapse of the country’s finances, ruthless policing, and the nation’s other woes.

Mizan said Shekari had been arrested on September 25, then convicted on November 20 on charges of “moharebeh,” a Farsi word meaning “war against God.” The charge has been levied against others in the decades since 1979 and carries the death penalty. Mizan said an appeal by Shekari’s lawyers against the sentence failed before he was executed.

The Mizan news agency, run by the country’s courts, said Shekari had been convicted in Tehran’s Revolutionary Tribunal, which usually hears closed cases that have been criticized internationally for not allowing those on trial to choose their own lawyers or even see evidence against them.

Read: After Nephew, It’s Sister Khaemeni’s Turn to Support Protests

Following his execution, Iranian state television aired a carefully edited package showing the courtroom and parts of Shekari’s trial, presided over by Judge Abolghassem Salavati.

Salavati herself is facing US sanctions for overseeing cases in which journalists, lawyers, political activists and members of Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities have been convicted of exercising freedom of expression and assembly and sentenced to long prison terms, flogging and even execution. , according to the US Department of the Treasury.

Activists warned that others could also be executed in the near future. They say that at least a dozen people have so far received the death penalty for their involvement in the demonstrations.

“The execution of #MohsenShekari must be me

Orignal source