Three men, arrested on the sidelines of protests in Iran, executed
Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaghoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi were executed on Friday 19 May 2023. © Social Media
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Iran executed three men sentenced to death on Friday (May 19th) for participating in protests in 2022 during which members of the forces lost their lives. It was on the sidelines of the popular protest movement after the death of the young Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini.
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Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi were convicted of moharebeh ("war against God") and possessing a weapon during a protest in the central city of Isfahan, the website of the judicial authority's Mizan Online news agency reported. Arrested in November 2022, the three men were sentenced to death in January 2023. They were also found guilty of being members of "illegal groups intending to undermine the security of the country and collusion leading to crimes against internal security," Mizan added. "According to the evidence and statements of the defendants, the shooting (of these three people) led to the martyrdom of three members of the security forces," Mizan Online added.
Petition for Majid Kazemi
Majid Kazemi, some of whose relatives live in Australia, had been the subject of a petition to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, asking for her support for his acquittal. "Majid is only 30 years old. He is a loving, compassionate and will-willed person. Like many other Iranians, he participated in peaceful protests to raise his voice and demand change," his cousin Mohammad Hashemi wrote in the petition published on change.org. Wong said Kazemi's execution "illustrates the brutality of the regime" in Iran. "Australia stands with the people of Iran," she added on Twitter.
A video posted on social media on Friday (May 19th) shows Tehran residents chanting "Death to the Islamic Republic" and other anti-regime slogans, apparently after the executions were announced. The video, which could not immediately be authenticated by AFP, was filmed in the middle-class district of Ekbatan, which has already been the site of anti-government protests in recent months.
More than ten executions per week
Iran has been shaken by a protest movement since the death on September 16, 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, three days after her arrest by the morality police who accused her of violating the strict dress code requiring women to wear the veil in the Islamic Republic. Many protesters have been arrested since September by the authorities.
Iran executes more people than any other country except China, according to several human rights NGOs, including Amnesty International. On May 9, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, also denounced the "incredibly high number" of executions this year in Iran, more than ten per week on average. In 2022, 582 people suffered the death penalty, up 75 percent from the previous year, according to Iran Human Rights and another Paris-based organization, Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM).
« Unimaginable wave of executions »
But the pace of executions has been even more intense in 2023: the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) has recorded at least 218 executions since the beginning of the year. Dozens of other jailed protesters "are in danger", warns Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the IHR. "We must ensure that the leaders of the Islamic Republic understand that the execution of protesters will not be tolerated," he said on Twitter. For the NGO Hengaw, also based in Norway, it is "an unimaginable wave of executions in Iran", calling on Twitter "human rights organizations as well as Western governments" to pay "special attention".
(
With AFP)
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