Iran Executes Two Prisoners Arrested in Ongoing Protests, Threatens More to Follow

In what human rights groups warn is just the start of a vio­lent cam­paign of polit­i­cal repres­sion, the Islamic Republic of Iran has begun exe­cut­ing pro­test­ers in the ongo­ing civ­il unrest fol­low­ing the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini while in cus­tody of the government’s morality police.

On December 8, 2022, the Iranian regime hanged 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari (pic­tured, left), after a secret tri­al in Iran’s Revolutionary Court. Four days lat­er, in defi­ance of inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of Shekari’s exe­cu­tion, Iran pub­licly hanged 23-year-old Majidreza Rahnavard (pic­tured, right) in the Shiite holy city of Mashhad. Iranian author­i­ties left Rahnavard’s bound body on pub­lic dis­play, hang­ing by his neck on a construction crane.

Iranian author­i­ties have con­firmed that anoth­er 12 indi­vid­u­als linked to the protests have been sen­tenced to death, while human rights groups have iden­ti­fied anoth­er 12 who have been indict­ed on charges car­ry­ing the death penal­ty. The charges vio­late core prin­ci­ples of inter­na­tion­al human rights law that lim­it the death penal­ty to the ​“most seri­ous crimes,” and pro­hib­it it for non-lethal offenses.

Both Rahnavard and Shekari were con­vict­ed of ​“moharabeh,” or ​“wag­ing war against God,” and after expe­dit­ed legal pro­ceed­ings, char­ac­ter­ized by human rights groups as ​“sham tri­als,” were sen­tenced to death. Human rights advo­cates have high­light­ed the unlaw­ful­ness of the tri­als, lack of legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the preva­lence of ​“coerced con­fes­sions” stem­ming from torture.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Director of Oslo-based Iran Human Rights, said that mere con­dem­na­tion of Iran’s actions was not enough. “[U]nless the polit­i­cal cost of the exe­cu­tions is increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, we will be fac­ing mass exe­cu­tions,” he said. With thou­sands of pro­tes­tors detained by the Iranian gov­ern­ment and hun­dreds more killed dur­ing the protests, Amiry-Moghaddam warned of ​“a seri­ous risk” that the gov­ern­ment would repeat its ​“grave human rights crime” in the 1980s when Iranian author­i­ties exe­cut­ed an esti­mat­ed 2,800 – 5,000 pro­test­ers and polit­i­cal oppo­nents in the sum­mer of 1988.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International​’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, pressed the ​“inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to go beyond expres­sions of out­rage and con­dem­na­tion and take all nec­es­sary mea­sures to pur­sue account­abil­i­ty for all offi­cials … involved in crimes under inter­na­tion­al law and oth­er grave vio­la­tions of human rights, includ­ing the right to life. This should include exer­cis­ing uni­ver­sal juris­dic­tion to inves­ti­gate all those sus­pect­ed of such crimes and issu­ing arrest war­rants when there is sufficient evidence.” 

In an his­toric tri­al in July 2022, Sweden exer­cised uni­ver­sal juris­dic­tion to pros­e­cute a for­mer Iranian offi­cial, Hamid Noury, for his involve­ment in the 1988 mas­sacres. Noury was con­vict­ed of war crimes and murder. 

According to Mizan news, the online news agency of the Iranian judi­cia­ry, Shekari was arrest­ed for alleged­ly block­ing a street in Teheran and assault­ing a mem­ber of the Basij mili­tia, a pro-gov­er­ment para­mil­i­tary vol­un­teer mili­tia, with a knife. Shekari’s exe­cu­tion came at the end of a week marked by a nation­wide labor strike dur­ing which busi­ness­es, shops, and bazaars in more than 50 cities closed in sup­port of demon­stra­tors. Just three days before Shekari’s exe­cu­tion, chief jus­tice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei attrib­uted these clo­sures to threats and fear from pro­test­ers and issued a renewed call for speedy tri­als and sentencing, 

Mizan alleged that Rahnavard had stabbed two mem­bers of the Basij mili­tia to death. 23 days after his arrest, and with­out noti­fy­ing his fam­i­ly, the state pub­licly hanged him using a crane. Mizan pub­lished graph­ic images of the scene depict­ing ​“Rahnavard hang­ing from the crane, his hands and feet bound, a black bag over his head” with a ban­ner in the back­drop ​“bear­ing a Quranic verse: ‘“Indeed the requital of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle, and try to cause cor­rup­tion on the earth, is that they shall be slain or cru­ci­fied, or shall have their hands and feet cut off from oppo­site sides, or be ban­ished from the land.”’ 

The exe­cu­tions exposed the con­tin­u­ing deep divi­sions between the fun­da­men­tal­ist Shiite cler­ics at the cen­ter of the Iranian regime and reli­gious author­i­ties for Iran’s minor­i­ty Sunni pop­u­la­tion. While hard­line Shiite cler­ic Ahmad Khatami praised Shekari’s exe­cu­tion, Molavi Abdolhamid, the lead­ing Sunni cler­ic for Iran’s Baluch pop­u­la­tion and an out­spo­ken crit­ic of author­i­ties’ treat­ment of pro­tes­tors, said the exe­cu­tion vio­lat­ed Quranic law. Under the Quran, Abdolhamid said, one who has not killed anoth­er can­not be put to death. Abdolhamid urged Iranian author­i­ties to ​“lis­ten to these pro­tes­tors” to find a mid­dle ground. ​“Beating, killing, and exe­cut­ing this nation is not right. This protest will not be quelled by killing peo­ple,” he said.

Prior to Shekari’s exe­cu­tion, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion estab­lish­ing an inde­pen­dent fact-find­ing mis­sion to ​“thor­ough­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gate alleged human rights vio­la­tions in Iran relat­ed to the protests that began on 16 September 2022.” On December 2, about a week before Shekari’s exe­cu­tion, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, stress­ing ​“the need to use restraint when deal­ing with demon­stra­tions in Iran.” 

The exe­cu­tions drew imme­di­ate and wide­spread inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion. United Nations human rights experts con­demned Shekari’s exe­cu­tion, called on Iran to release those impris­oned for their involve­ment in peace­ful protests, and urged ​“Iran to estab­lish a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions with a view to abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty.” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a tweet that he was ​“appalled” by Shekari’s exe­cu­tion and called on Iran to ​“end this brutal crackdown.” 

The gov­ern­ments of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany also issued state­ments of con­dem­na­tion. The British Foreign Ministry said it was ​“out­raged” by Shekari’s exe­cu­tion. ​“The exe­cu­tion of Mohsen Shekari by the Iranian regime is abhor­rent,” Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said. ​“We have made our views clear to the Iranian author­i­ties — Iran must imme­di­ate­ly halt exe­cu­tions and end the vio­lence against its own people.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweet­ed after Shekari’s exe­cu­tion that the ​“the Iranian regime’s con­tempt for human­i­ty is lim­it­less.” The French Foreign Ministry issued a state­ment ​“utter­ly condemn[ing]” Rahnavard’s pub­lic exe­cu­tion and ​“the many oth­er seri­ous, unac­cept­able vio­la­tions of fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms com­mit­ted by the Iranian author­i­ties. … Demonstrators must not be exe­cut­ed in response to the cur­rent protests in Iran,” the state­ment said. ​“France calls on the Iranian author­i­ties to halt these exe­cu­tions and to lis­ten to the legit­i­mate aspi­ra­tions of the Iranian people.”

Executions have surged in Iran in 2022 as the gov­ern­ment has attempt­ed to quell grow­ing pub­lic dis­con­tent. Iran Human Rights report­ed in July that Iran had car­ried out at least 251 exe­cu­tions in the first half of 2022, more than dou­ble the total in the same peri­od a year before. IHR raised con­cerns that the exe­cu­tions were being used as a polit­i­cal tool to intim­i­date anti-gov­ern­ment pro­test­ers, and that eth­nic minori­ties were being dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed for execution.