First protest-related execution in Iran
While others have been given the death penalty for similar crimes, the man was found guilty of stabbing a security guard.
Tehran, Iran: Iran has announced the first execution of a person found guilty of a crime related to the nation’s current protests that has been made publically known.
Mohsen Shekari was the individual who was executed, according to the official news website of the Iranian judiciary on Thursday.
He was found guilty of “waging war against God” after allegedly stabbing a security guard in Tehran and blocking off a street.
The judiciary reported that just over a month passed between the man’s first court appearance and his execution, demonstrating the haste with which Iranian authorities have vowed to pursue cases associated with “riots” — as they frequently refer to incidents related to the protests.
Just over a week after Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly failing to follow the country’s mandatory dress code for women, passed away while in custody, protests broke out across the country, the country’s morality police arrested the 23-year-old Shekari.
On November 20, Shekari was given a preliminary death sentence, and on Thursday morning, it was executed shortly after the country’s Supreme Court upheld it.
According to alleged confessions made public by the judiciary, Shekari was accompanied by a companion named “Ali,” who gave him a long knife, and who offered him “good money to participate in the riots.”
Before injuring a security guard by striking him in the shoulder blade, Shekari is accused of aiding in the closure of a street in Sattarkhan, a busy district in the heart of Tehran.
Additionally, he charged that they “denied people their freedom and endangered their security” in addition to “creating dread and terror.”
In connection with the protests, Amnesty International had earlier this month issued a warning that at least 28 individuals in Iran would be put to death. They stated that “authorities utilise the death penalty as an instrument of political repression to crush the popular revolt.”
Earlier this week, the head of the judiciary Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei stated that the Supreme Court had affirmed “several” of the prior death penalties for “corruption on Earth” and “waging war against God” in relation to the protests and that they “would be carried out shortly.”
The protest-related death sentences began to be publicly announced on November 14; the most recent was handed down on Tuesday when five people were found guilty of murdering a Basij paramilitary force member.
In that case, 11 more people, three of whom were minors, were given lengthy prison sentences.
In a case that appeared to have nothing to do with the protests, Iran executed four people this week and sentenced three others to prison for cooperating with Israeli intelligence.
Human rights experts from the UN have urged Iran to stop executing prisoners in response to the protests, but the Iranian government has refused, claiming that they must defend their nation from foreign plots, particularly those allegedly orchestrated by the United States, which they blame for the unrest.
A fact-finding mission to look into how Iran handled the protests was approved by the UN Human Rights Council last month, but Tehran said it would not cooperate with the mission because of its “political” nature.
Tehran has also denounced a vote to exclude Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women that is scheduled for December 14 and which UN Watch predicts would pass handily.
The execution on Thursday followed three days of strikes and protests that began on Tuesday and finished on Wednesday.
On Wednesday night, protests were captured on camera in Tehran and several other locations. Videos published by state-affiliated media showing other stores operating have challenged images of stores being closed due to strikes.
