Iran executes three protestors over recent violence- judiciary says

Iran has executed three men it said were implicated in the deaths of three members of the security forces during anti-government protests, drawing condemnation from rights groups and the EU and risking further international isolation.

Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi and Saeed Yaqoubi were killed on Friday morning, the Tasnim agency reported. Crowds had gathered outside the prison where they were being held on Thursday night as rumours of their imminent executions grew.

Cultural figures inside and outside Iran as well as family members had stepped up a campaign over the past week to halt the executions on the grounds that Iranian authorities had failed to produce definitive evidence of the men’s responsibility for the deaths of two members of the Basij paramilitary force and a law enforcement officer on 16 November.

Families and supporters held nightly vigils outside the Dastgerd prison in Isfahan in support of the three men, who were being held inside. They were given a final meeting with their families on Wednesday, raising fears that their execution was imminent.

Immediately after their execution on Friday, state media re-ran video posts of what were presented as the defendants’ confessions, which Amnesty International said had been extracted by torture.

At least seven people have been hanged in relation to the protest movement that swept Iran in September, and dozens more have been sentenced to death or convicted of capital offences.

The EU said it condemned the executions “in the strongest possible terms” and that it called “once again on the Iranian authorities to immediately end the strongly condemnable practice of imposing and carrying out death sentences against protesters”.

The latest executions “must have serious consequences” for Tehran or dozens of “other protesters will be in danger”, said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR). “We must make the Islamic republic leaders understand that execution of protesters will not be tolerated,” he wrote on Twitter.

Hengaw, another Norway-based rights group, decried what it described as an “unfathomable wave of executions in Iran”.

The nationwide protests that began last autumn have turned into one of the boldest challenges to the clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution. They were ignited by the death of the 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police” on 16 September.

Prominent Iranian figures including the actor Taraneh Alidoosti – who was herself jailed for a few weeks in December for publishing a photograph of herself without a hijab – and the footballer Ali Karimi had expressed their concern about the three men’s fate. Rallies in support of them had been held in Berlin, London and Stockholm.

A video showing a group of mothers from the western city of Sanandaj condemning the death sentences was shared on social media.

On Wednesday, a Twitter account published handwritten notes by the men appealing for public support. “Don’t let them kill us,” read one note, which went viral on social media.

Friends of the families of the men said one of them – Kazemi – had been suspended upside down by interrogators and shown a video of his brother being tortured. Kazemi was also allegedly subjected to mock executions at least 15 times.

In an audio message recorded inside Dastgerd prison, Kazemi said: “I swear to God I am innocent. I didn’t have any weapons on me. They [security forces] kept beating me and ordering me to say this weapon is mine … I told them I would say whatever they wanted, just please leave my family alone. I did whatever they wanted because of the torture.”

Kazemi’s sister said in an interview with the Shargh newspaper before the executions: “We demand to see evidence. They should present evidence that shows my brother was present at the time of the murder. The only evidence in this case is statements by others; one says ‘I heard from someone that it was Majid’, and another says that ‘Bahmani told us that Majid was there’.”

“We don’t intend to cause trouble,” she added. “We are neither against the supreme leadership [Iranian government] nor anyone else. We just don’t want our brother’s blood to be unjustly spilled.”

At least 582 people were executed in Iran last year, the highest number since 2015 and well above the 333 recorded in 2021, IHR and the Paris-based group Together Against the Death Penalty said in a joint report in April. More than 220 people had already been executed this year, IHR said recently.

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Mizan, the judiciary’s website, announced the executions of Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi, without saying how they were carried out. Authorities say they killed a police officer and two members of the paramilitary Basij group in Isfahan in November during nationwide protests.
Rights groups say the three were subjected to torture, forced into televised confessions and denied due process.
The protests erupted last September after the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code. The demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the theocracy that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The demonstrations have largely subsided in recent months, though there are still sporadic acts of defiance, including the refusal of a growing number of women to wear the mandatory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.
Iran has executed a total of seven people in connection with the protests. Rights groups say they and several others who have been sentenced to death were convicted by secretive state security courts and denied the right to defend themselves.
“The prosecution relied on forced ‘confessions,’ and the indictment was riddled with irregularities that reveal this was a politically motivated case,” Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, said of the three executed on Friday.
The group said Kazemi had called a relative and accused authorities of torturing him by flogging his feet, using a stun gun and threatening him with sexual assault.
London-based Amnesty International also criticized the cases.
“The shocking manner in which the trial and sentencing of these protesters was fast-tracked through Iran’s judicial system amid the use of torture-tainted ‘confessions’, serious procedural flaws and a lack of evidence is another example of the Iranian authorities’ brazen disregard for the rights to life and fair trial,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Iran launched a heavy crackdown on the protests, portraying them — without evidence — as a foreign-backed conspiracy. The protesters said they were fed up after decades of repression and poor governance. Iran’s economy has been in a tailspin since the US unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement and restored crippling sanctions.
More than 500 people were killed during months of protests, including dozens of members of the security forces. Some 19,000 people were arrested, though many have since been released.
Iran is one of the world’s leading executioners. At least 582 people were executed in 2022, up from 333 the previous year. The surge in executions, including for drug violations and vague charges of “enmity against God” and “spreading corruption on earth,” has drawn criticism from UN officials and human rights activists.