Iran executes three men over violence during anti-govt stir

Dubai: Iran on Friday executed three men accused of deadly violence during last year’s anti-government protests despite objections from human rights groups.

Mizan, the judiciary’s website, announced the executions of Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi, without saying how they were carried out. Authorities say they killed a police officer and two members of the paramilitary Basij group in Isfahan in November during nationwide protests.

Rights groups say the three were subjected to torture, forced into televised confessions and denied due process.

The protests erupted last September after the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code.

The demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the theocracy that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. agencies

The demonstrations have largely subsided in recent months, though there are still sporadic acts of defiance, including the refusal of a growing number of women to wear the mandatory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.

Iran has executed a total of seven people in connection with the protests.

Rights groups say they and several others who have been sentenced to death were convicted by secretive state security courts and denied the right to defend themselves.

“The prosecution relied on forced confessions,’ and the indictment was riddled with irregularities that reveal this was a politically motivated case,” Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, said of the three executed on Friday.

The group said Kazemi had called a relative and accused authorities of torturing him by flogging his feet, using a stun gun and threatening him with sexual assault.

London-based Amnesty International also criticized the cases.