Dubai, Emirates Arabes Unis — Iran said on Thursday that it carried out its first execution of a prisoner convicted of a crime purportedly committed amid the country’s ongoing countrywide demonstrations.
Other inmates face the possibility of the death sentence for their participation in the protests, which began as an outcry against Iran’s morality police and have grown into one of the most significant threats to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Since, according to activists, at least a dozen people have been sentenced to death for their participation in the demonstrations, activists worry that other executions are imminent.
The “killing of #MohsenShekari must be met with STRONG replies,” stated Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based advocacy organization Iran Human Rights. “This execution must have immediate repercussions abroad”
The news agency Mizan in Iran reported the execution. In Tehran, he was accused of blocking a street and striking a security officer with a machete.
The executed guy was identified as Mohsen Shekari by the news agency controlled by the country’s court, Mizan. It stated that he was convicted by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, which generally conducts closed-door proceedings that have been condemned globally in prior cases for not allowing defendants to choose their own attorneys or even view the evidence against them.
Mizan stated that Shekari was detained on September 25 and convicted on November 20 of “moharebeh,” which is the Farsi word for “waging war against God.” Since 1979, others have been charged with this crime, which carries the death penalty.
Since the September 16 murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being imprisoned by the country’s morality police, Iran has been shaken by demonstrations. Human Rights Activists in Iran, an organization that has monitored the protests since they began, reports that at least 475 people have been murdered in the demonstrations due to a heavy-handed security crackdown. Over 18 thousand individuals have been arrested by officials.
Iran is one of the leading executioners in the world. Typically, convicts are executed by hanging.
Amnesty International has already received a paper signed by a top Iranian police commander requesting that the execution of a prisoner be “finished ‘in the quickest period feasible’ and that his death sentence be carried out in public as a ‘heartwarming gesture for the security forces.’”
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