Majidreza Rahnavard was publicly hanged from a construction crane as a gruesome warning to others after being convicted of stabbing two members of a paramilitary force. Activists warn that at least a dozen people have already been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings.
On Monday, Iran’s Mizan news agency published images of Rahnavard hanging from a crane, with his hands and feet bound and a black bag over his head.
The Mizan report identified the dead as “student” Basij, paramilitary volunteers under Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Rahnavard was accused of trying to flee to a foreign country when he was arrested.
Rahnavard had been convicted of “moharebeh”, a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God”, and was executed on a banner bearing a Koranic verse.
Executions in public using a crane have been rare in recent years, though Iran used the same method of hanging to put down unrest following the disputed 2009 presidential election.
The European Union expressed dismay at the latest execution and said it would approve a tough package of sanctions against Iran for its crackdown on protesters and for supplying drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine.
Iran is one of the world’s top executioners and has executed more than 500 prisoners so far this year, the highest number in five years, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights.
Majid’s execution is the second execution linked to the nearly three-month wave of anti-government protests and he was publicly hung in the city of Mashad this morning there, however there is no evidence film or anything to prove he had taken place in protests or5 killed any Iranian security forces.
The regime is trying to scare off other young people who are going out and protesting by executing them, and we know that in the past few decades, numbers of prisoners under torture have come on state television and confessed to crimes they never committed.
The death sentence to protesters has been arrested and there is an outrage around the world. The European foreign office is planning to pass a package of sanctions against Iran. The protests in Iran started after the killing Mahsa Aamini a 22 year old Kurdish who was apprehended in Tehran by the countries ‘morality police’. Since then there have been mass protests around the country never seen before.
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