Demonstrating in Iran pays off with the gallows

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The Islamic regime is executing one of the prisoners in the mobilizations the country has been going through for three months

The Iranian regime is in a hurry to end the protests and steps forward with the first execution of a detainee in the mobilizations. As of now, the demonstrators, united in the streets for three months over the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Vice Police, know that the threat of hanging is real. The death penalty comes after very fast-track trials for Justice that sue human rights organizations for the lack of guarantees. First on this blacklist of executions is 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari, accused of being a “rioter” who blocked a main road in Tehran on Sept. 25 and injured a member of a paramilitary force with a machete.

Shekari was arrested just ten days after the protests began, on November 1 a court found him guilty of fighting and drawing a weapon “with intent to kill, cause terror and disturb the order and security of society” and sentenced him to death for “enmity against God,” the Justice Ministry’s agency Mizan reported. The defendant appealed, but 20 days later the Supreme Court upheld the verdict and after another 20 days they dragged him to the gallows.

Organizations such as Amnesty International (AI) denounced that these death sentences are intended to “depress further the popular uprising” and “instill fear in the public”. Shekari was the first of a list that may soon be expanded, as there are currently ten more detainees in the protests on death row.

From the top of the judiciary, the top official, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, has issued an order to “issue harsh sentences” as a deterrent measure. Judges are being pressured by the legislature as 227 members of parliament representing 290 seats signed an open letter calling for death sentences against detained protesters.

It will go to work and now we need to see the reaction in the streets and within the international community. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based activist group Iran Human Rights (IHR), called on social media for a “strong” international response to the execution, “otherwise we face executions of demonstrators on a daily basis.” Social networks were filled with messages of condemnation and the blogger Hossein Ronaghi turned to the authorities to declare that “we are not closing our eyes, the execution of a protester will have serious consequences. To take the life of one person is to take the life of all of us. Do you have enough room on the gallows for all of us?

Despite the lack of leadership, the protests under the slogan “woman, life, freedom” do not stop and this week they have won their first moral victory with the announcement of the suspension of the patrols of the Moral Police, the body whose dependencies Amini died on September 16. However, the end of the patrols does not change the obligation to wear the veil, a red line since the triumph of the revolution. The victory has already claimed the lives of more than 200 people, according to government data, although some human rights groups claim the number of victims is more than 400 and the number of detainees is in the thousands. Iranian Kurdistan, the area Amini originally came from, has been the epicenter of mobilizations and general strikes such as the one that immobilized part of the country for 72 hours this week.

In 2021, according to AI figures, Iran was the second country to use the death penalty the most, surpassed only by China. Earlier this week, Tehran authorities reported the hanging of four prisoners charged with “intelligence cooperation” with Israel and “kidnapping”. Those executed were arrested in May and the Islamic Republic linked them to activities of the Jewish State’s intelligence services, which are very active in Iran.

Source: La Verdad

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