Iran issues first known death sentence linked to uprising - The Washington Post

Iran’s revolutionary tribunal handed down the decease condemnation Sunday, according to Mizan, the quality tract of the country’s judiciary. The protester was accused of mounting a authorities gathering connected occurrence and charged with “war against God” and “corruption connected earth,” arsenic good arsenic acting against nationalist security.

A abstracted subdivision of Iran’s revolutionary tribunal sentenced 5 different unnamed defendants to up to 10 years successful situation for violating nationalist information and disrupting nationalist order, according to Mizan. The rulings tin beryllium appealed.

There is small anticipation of just trials for detained demonstrators, bystanders and chroniclers of the uprising. Iran’s judicial strategy is stacked against the accused and dominated by the country’s information services. Rights groups pass that these are sham trials, with detainees often forced oregon tortured into providing mendacious confessions based connected made-up evidence.

More than 15,000 Iranians person been arrested and respective 100 killed successful astir 2 months of anti-government protests, the activistic quality bureau Hrana estimates. Iranian authorities, who assertion that Amini died of preexisting aesculapian conditions, person framed the protests arsenic riots incited by third-party countries to destabilize Iran.

A fig of protesters look charges that tin transportation the decease penalty. They see Toomaj Salehi, a rapper who was arrested aft taking portion successful the protests and releasing euphony that supported their cause, and Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, the two pistillate Iranian journalists who helped interruption the communicative of Amini. Authorities person accused the pair, without evidence, of being CIA agents. They person been held successful Tehran’s Evin situation complex — which is notorious for alleged wide quality rights violations — since precocious September.

The household of different salient detainee, activistic Hossein Ronaghi, said Sunday that his beingness was successful information aft helium was transferred to a infirmary successful Evin situation and they mislaid interaction with him. Ronaghi is connected a hunger onslaught to protestation his apprehension connected Sept. 24. Ronaghi’s household said that helium suffers from a kidney information and that some his legs were breached portion successful jail.

When decease sentences are issued for governmental prisoners successful Iran, they are not ever carried out, and tin sometimes beryllium commuted. But the menace of decease is real: In 2021, Iran executed astatine slightest 314 people, according to Amnesty International — the second-highest known fig of executions aft China. The existent fig is apt higher.

Sunday’s condemnation is the archetypal known to beryllium linked to this year’s protests. Experts affiliated with the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) called connected Iranian authorities past week “to halt utilizing the decease punishment arsenic a instrumentality to squash protests” and “to instantly merchandise each protesters.”

In their statement, the experts said they feared that Iranian authorities would people “women and girls, who person been astatine the forefront of protests, and particularly women quality rights defenders, who person been arrested and jailed for demanding the extremity of systemic and systematic discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”

Other countries person sought to use unit connected Tehran to halt the targeting of protesters, with much than 40 countries supporting a connection by Germany and Iceland for the HRC to clasp a peculiar league connected quality rights successful Iran.

On Monday, the European Union and Britain announced further sanctions against Iranian officials and entities progressive successful repressing protesters.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said successful a statement that the sanctions nonstop “a wide connection to the Iranian regime” that “the convulsive crackdown connected protests indispensable halt and state of look indispensable beryllium respected.”

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron met with 4 female dissidents from Iran and told them helium respects and admires “the gyration they are leading.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry criticized the move, calling it “a flagrant usurpation of France’s planetary responsibilities successful the combat against coercion and violence.”