Iran executes 3 males connected to anti-government protests

Rights teams say the 3 had been unfairly accused, made to admit below torture and convicted with out enough proof, to discourage dissent. The executions adopted “a grossly unfair trial that bore no resemblance to meaningful judicial proceedings,” rights workforce Amnesty International mentioned in a remark.

Washington had warned Tehran towards wearing out the sentences.

“The execution of these men — after what have been widely regarded as sham trials — would be an affront to human rights and basic dignity in Iran and everywhere,” State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel mentioned at a information briefing Thursday. “It is clear from this episode that the Iranian regime has learned nothing from the protests.”

Authorities performed the executions, for which no public date were set, at the back of jail partitions Friday morning, after Iran’s top courtroom rejected a last enchantment, in step with Mizan News Agency, which is affiliated with the rustic’s judiciary. Iran generally carries out executions by means of putting.

Amnesty International, mentioning “informed sources,” discovered that interrogators had “suspended Majid Kazemi upside down and showed him a video of them torturing his brother, whom they also detained,” and subjected him to “mock executions at least 15 times by standing him on a chair and putting a rope around his neck.

The 3 executions deliver to seven the choice of folks put to dying in reference to the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests over clerical rule. At least five others remain on death row, according to HRANA, a Virginia-based activist news agency focused on Iran. Dozens have been charged with capital offenses. Rights groups say that an estimated 500 demonstrators and bystanders have also been killed in the protests.

The ordeal of the three men drew widespread attention in Iran, as a sign of how far authorities could be willing to push their ongoing crackdown months after the protests dwindled.

“These executions are supposed to lengthen the Islamic Republic’s rule and just a top political price can forestall extra protester executions,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the nongovernmental organization Iran Human Rights, wrote on Twitter.

The three were arrested Nov. 21 and accused of killing the two Basij members and the law enforcement officer six days earlier during protests in Isfahan, in central Iran. Authorities have accused demonstrators of being rioters and under the influence of foreign intelligence agencies.

The defendants were tried swiftly, not given access to their attorneys and convicted without any solid evidence linking them to the deaths, advocates said. One of the judges most associated with sentencing protesters to death found them guilty of “waging battle towards God.”

“The shocking speed at which these men were ushered to their deaths illustrates the Iranian authorities’ flagrant disregard for the rights to life and a fair trial,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Friday.

Unrelated to the protest motion, Iran has performed a “scary” spate of executions this year, mainly of men from minority backgrounds charged with drug offences, United Nations rights chief Volker Türk said recently.

Kazemi, 31, had a business making copper kitchenware, Mirhashemi, 36, was a karate champion and bodybuilder instructor, and Yaqoubi, 38, worked at a real estate company and supported his parents, according to news reports.

When the protest movement spread, Washington expressed support for the demonstrators and piled more economic sanctions on Iran. But some Iranians demanded that the international community do more to hold their country’s leaders accountable.

In its Friday statement, Amnesty International urged governments to denounce the executions and to charge Iranian officials with crimes. under the principle of universal jurisdiction —by which a state can prosecute certain serious crimes committed in other countries.

“Intensifying diplomatic/economic isolation should follow these state-sanctioned killings,” Hadi Ghaemi, head of the Washington-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, wrote Friday on Twitter, “Unless the Iranian government are met with severe penalties by means of the world group, masses of protester lives will probably be taken by means of their killing system.”