Iran executes second prisoner involved in protests

Iran has carried out a second execution linked to the anti-government protests engulfing the country, Press Association and BBC News have confirmed.

Majidreza Rahnavard was hanged "in public" early on Thursday in the city of Mashhad, 460 miles east of Tehran, the judiciary announced.

Iran aired footage on state television, claiming the clip showed the prisoner stabbing two members of the paramilitary Basij Resistance Force to death and running away. He was convicted of "enmity against God".

Iran’s Mizan news agency, under the country’s judiciary, alleged wrestling champion Rahnavard killed the two men on 17 November in Mashhad and wounded four others.

Footage aired on state TV showed a man chasing another around a street corner, then standing over him and stabbing him after he fell against a parked motorbike.

Another showed the same man stabbing another immediately after. The assailant, which state TV alleged was Rahnavard, then fled. The Mizan report identified the dead as “student” Basij, paramilitary volunteers under Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Human rights groups have warned that protesters are being sentenced to death after sham trials with no due process.

"Rahnavard was sentenced to death based on coerced confessions, after a grossly unfair process and a show trial. This crime must be met with serious consequences for the Islamic Republic," tweeted Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based Iran Human Rights.

"Thousands of detained protesters, and a dozen death sentences already issued. There is a serious risk of mass-execution of protesters," he added.

Public execution of a young protester, 23 days after his arrest, is another serious crime committed by the I.R. leaders and a significant escalation of the level of violence against protesters. #MajidrezaRahnavard #IranRevoIution2022 #Mahsa_Amini pic.twitter.com/Ucj5iPZ8Z8

— Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam (@iranhr) December 12, 2022

The public hanging of Rahnavard shows the speed at which Iran now carries out death sentences handed down for those detained in the demonstrations the government hopes to put down.

Activists warn that at least a dozen people already have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings.

At least 488 people have been killed since the demonstrations began in mid-September, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that’s been monitoring the protests. Another 18,200 people have been detained by authorities.

The Basij have been deployed in major cities, attacking and detaining protesters, who in many cases have fought back.

Activists say it has seen strikes, shops closed and demonstrations amid the unrest that began over the 16 September death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by Iran’s morality police.

Protests in Iran continue. pic.twitter.com/u8PGsLiAAq

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 11, 2022

The tribunals have been internationally criticised for not allowing those on trial to pick their own lawyers or even see the evidence against them.

Rahnavard had been convicted on the charge of “moharebeh”, a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God”.

That charge has been levied against others in the decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and carries the death penalty.

Iran is one of the world’s top executioners and typically executes prisoners by hanging. The first prisoner detained during demonstrations was executed last Thursday.

Amnesty International has said it obtained a document signed by one senior Iranian police commander asking that the execution for one prisoner be “completed ‘in the shortest possible time’ and that his death sentence be carried out in public as ‘a heart-warming gesture towards the security forces’”.

Amid the unrest, Iran is also battered by an economic crisis that has seen the national currency, the rial, drop to new lows against the US dollar.

The international community must not be deceived by dubious claims about the disbanding of Iran's ‘morality police’.

People in Iran still need our attention and action. pic.twitter.com/HBKKoCFdTL

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) December 6, 2022