Iran executed two more people on Saturday in connection with the anti-regime protests that started months ago following the death of a 22-year-old woman at the hands of the religios morality police.
The young men who were executed have been identified as Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini. They were convicted of killing a Basij militia member during the anti-hijab protests, Iranian news agency Fars News reported. Media reports said one of the young men who were hanged was a karate champion while the other was a volunteer children’s coach.
Condemned Young Man not Given Chance to Speak to Family
Human rights bodies around the world condemned the Iranian judicial overreach. Both Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, and Mohammad Mehdi Karami were hanged on Saturday morning. The lawyers of the defendants said Karami was not given the final right to speak to his family before the execution.
According to reports, Iran has condemned scores of people for various alleged crimes that stemmed from the anti-hijab protests that ravaged the country after the young Kurdish woman was killed by the morality police for not wearing the hijab properly.
Iran carried out the first official execution over the Mahsa Amini demonstrations in early December. A man named Mohsen Shekari was hanged after the regime convicted him of injuring a security guard with a knife during protests sparked by Amini’s death. The Iranian government said that Shekari was “waging war against God’.
International Outcry
Iran is apparently going ahead with the executions, some of them carried out publicly, despite international uproar over the unprecedented human rights suppression. Though the protests erupted as a form of an agitation over forcing hijab, it soon became one of the most significant challenges to theocracy in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
It has been reported that Iranian footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani is facing execution for campaigning for women’s rights in the Islamic country. According to reports, Nasr-Azadani and two others accused were made to read a “forced confession” on state television last month, following which they were convicted of waging war against the country.
More rights activists in Iran are facing the threat of execution. According to CNN, as many as 41 more protesters have been given death sentences.
“We deplore the execution of two more protesters, #MohammadMehdiKarami & #MohammadHosseini, following unfair trials based on forced confessions …We urge Iran to halt all executions,” the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.
EU Expresses Outrage
“The European Union calls once again on the Iranian authorities to immediately end the strongly condemnable practice of imposing and carrying out death sentences against protesters … The EU also calls on the authorities to annul without delay the recent death penalty sentences that were already pronounced in the context of the ongoing protests and to provide due process to all detainees,” the European Union said in a statement.
