Conflicts & War

Iran to carry out executions of protesters ‘soon’: chief justice

Tehran, Dec 5 (EFE).- Iran’s judiciary announced on Monday that some of the people sentenced to death over their participation in the recent nationwide protests would be executed “soon”.

In a speech at the Supreme Council, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i confirmed that some of the sentences handed to those “who were corrupt and hostile and tried to kill and create insecurity” had been “approved and will be implemented soon,” state-owned news agency Mizan reported.

According to Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, since the beginning of the social unrest in mid-September over the death of Mahsa Amini, six people have been sentenced to death, including three minors.

Amini died in police custody after being arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police — which has now been disbanded — for allegedly not wearing her hijab in line with the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

The convicted protesters are accused by Iran of ‘efsad-fil-arz’ (Farsi for “corruption on earth”), a term for a series of offenses against public security or Islamic morals; and of ‘moharebeh’, or “enmity against god”, which is used by the Iranian justice system to describe major crimes against the state or against Islam.

Iranian authorities have so far accused some 2,000 protesters of various crimes, 21 of whom could face death sentences.

Mohseni-Eje’i also confirmed some imprisonment sentences, including photojournalist Ahmadreza Halabisaz, who said last week that he had been sentenced to five years for covering the protests after a trial in which he did not have a lawyer.

At least 448 people, including 60 minors, have been killed by security forces since the start of the unrest, according to IRHNGO. EFE

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