Iran announced on Thursday that it has executed a prisoner convicted of a crime purportedly committed amid the nation’s ongoing nationwide protests. This was Tehran‘s first execution of this kind.
The execution takes place in the midst of other detainees potentially facing the death penalty for their participation in the protests, which started as a backlash against Iran’s morality police and have since grown into one of the most significant threats to theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Since activists claim at least a dozen people have already been given the death penalty for taking part in the demonstrations, they issue a warning that additional executions may occur soon.
The “execution of #MohsenShekari must be me with STRONG reactions otherwise we will be facing daily executions of protesters,” wrote Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Oslo-based activist group Iran Human Rights. “This execution must have rapid practical consequences internationally.”
The execution was announced by Iran’s Mizan news agency. It said that the man had blocked a street and attacked a security guard in Tehran with a machete.
The guy who was executed was named Mohsen Shekari by the nation’s judiciary-run Mizan news agency. It claimed that he had been found guilty by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, which generally hears cases behind closed doors and has previously drawn criticism from throughout the world for denying defendants the right to choose their own attorneys or even access to the evidence against them.
According to Mizan, Shekari was detained on September 24 and found guilty on November 20 of the Farsi crime of “moharebeh,” which means “waging war against God.” Since 1979, this charge, which carries the death penalty, has been brought against other people.
Since the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on September 16—who passed away after being arrested by the nation’s morality police—protests have shaken Iran. According to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been keeping track of the protests since they started, at least 475 people have died in the demonstrations amid a harsh security crackdown. Authorities have taken in excess of 18,000 people.
One of the top executioners in the world is Iran. Usually, prisoners are hanged to death. Amnesty International reported that it had already obtained a paper from a senior Iranian police commander requesting that a prisoner’s execution be carried out “in the shortest possible time” and in public as “a heart-warming gesture toward the security forces.”
