JEDDAH: Iran killed a second man on Monday in connection with months-long protests, despite an international uproar over its use of capital punishment against people involved in the movement.
EU foreign ministers chastised Iran for cracking down on anti-government protesters and delivering drones to Russia, while pushing forward with a fresh round of sanctions aimed at putting pressure on Tehran.
According to Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy leader, the EU “will take all measures we can to assist young women and peaceful demonstrators.”
“With this sanctions package, we are targeting in particular those who are guilty for the killings, the violence against innocent people…these are mainly the Revolutionary Guards,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated.
The public hanging of Majidreza Rahnavard on Monday demonstrates the rapidity with which Iran is now carrying out death sentences handed down for people jailed in the regime’s attempt to quell protests.
Rahnavard, 23, was sentenced to death by a court in Mashhad for murdering two members of the security forces with a knife and injuring four others, according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency.
According to rights groups, he was executed just over three weeks after being captured in November.
The hanging occurred just four days after Mohsen Shekari, also 23, was executed on Thursday on charges of hurting a member of the security forces in the first instance of the death sentence being applied against a protester.
“These executions are an obvious attempt to terrify people, not for committing crimes, but for expressing themselves in the streets, for wanting to live in freedom,” Germany’s Baerbock said.
Mizan released photos of Rahnavard’s execution, which showed a guy with his wrists tied behind his back, hanging from a rope linked to a crane.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights, stated that Rahnavard “was sentenced to death based on coerced confessions after a fundamentally unjust process and a show trial.”
“The public execution of a teenage demonstrator 23 days after his detention is another heinous crime perpetrated by the regime’s officials and a substantial escalation of violence against protestors,” he continued.
The protests were started by the death in jail of Mahsa Amini, 22, a Kurdish-Iranian apprehended by morality police on September 16.
Source: Arab News
