Iran executes second man for alleged crime during nationwide protests

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran said on Monday it had executed a second prisoner detained and sentenced amid Nationwide protests challenging the country’s theocracyairing footage on state television she said showed him stabbing two men to death and running away.

The public hanging of Majidreza Rahnavard, less than a month after he allegedly fatally stabbed two security officials, shows how quickly Iran is now carrying out death sentences against those detained during protests the government hopes to quell .

Activists warn that at least a dozen people have already been sentenced to death in closed hearings. At least 488 people have been killed since the protests began in mid-September, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that monitors the protests. Another 18,200 people were arrested by the authorities.

Iran’s Mizan news agency, under the country’s judicial authority, claimed that Rahnavard stabbed two members of the security forces to death on November 17 in Mashhad and injured four others.

Footage shown on state television showed a man chasing another around a street corner, then standing over him and stabbing him after he fell into a parked motorcycle. Another showed the same man stabbing another immediately afterwards. The attacker, who state television said was Rahnavard, then fled.

The Mizan report identified the dead as Basij “students”, paramilitary volunteers under Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The Basij deployed in major cities, attacking and detaining protesters, who in many cases fought back.

A heavily edited state television report aired after Rahnavard’s execution showed clips of him in the courtroom. In the video, he says he came to hate the Basijis after seeing video clips on social media of the forces beating and killing protesters.

The Mizan Report provided no motive for Rahnavard’s alleged attack. The report says Rahnavard was trying to flee to a foreign country when he was arrested.

Mashhad, a holy Shia city, is located about 750 km east of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Activists say he has seen strikes, closed shops and protests amid the unrest that began after the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly breaking the country’s strict dress code regarding the hijab for women.

The nationwide protests have become one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Mizan said Rahnavard was sentenced by the Revolutionary Court in Mashhad. The courts have been internationally criticized for not allowing those on trial to choose their own lawyers or even see the evidence against them.

Rahnavard had been convicted of “moharebeh”, a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God”. This accusation has been made against others in the decades following the revolution and carries the death penalty.

Iran is one of the best executioners in the world and usually executes prisoners by hanging. This executed the first prisoner detained during demonstrations last Thursday.

Subsequently, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based activist group Iran Human Rights, wrote that “the execution of #MohsenShekari must be me with STRONG reactions or we will face daily executions of protesters. This execution must have rapid practical consequences at the international level.”

Amnesty International said it had obtained a document signed by a senior Iranian police official calling for a prisoner’s execution to be ‘completed’ as soon as possible ‘and for his death sentence to be carried out in public as ‘a gesture comforting to the security forces.'”

According to Amnesty, “the Iranian authorities are using the death penalty as a tool of political repression to sow fear among the public and put an end to the popular uprising”.

Amid the unrest, Iran is also being hit by an economic crisis which has seen the national currency, the rial, fall to new lows against the US dollar.