Published: Less than 20 min ago
Three people have been sentenced to death in connection with the protests that raged in Iran for almost two months.
The human rights organization Iran Human Rights fears mass executions unless the international community intervenes.
One of the three is sentenced for attacking police officers with his car and killing one of them, another for stabbing a police officer, and the third for trying to block traffic and “spread terror”, reports the Mizan Online news agency.
The announcement of the new death sentences comes days after two more people were sentenced to death in connection with the protests – the first death sentences since the start of the protest wave.
According to Mizan Online, five people have also been sentenced to between five and ten years in prison.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, head of the Oslo-based human rights organization Iran Human Rights (IHR), strongly condemns the sentences.
– The protesters do not have access to lawyers in the interrogation phase, they are subjected to physical and psychological torture to give false confessions, and are sentenced by revolutionary courts based on those confessions, he says.
The IHR fears future mass executions of arrested protesters unless the international community makes it clear to Iran that the executions have serious political consequences.
Protests continue to rage in Iran, on the day two months after 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini died in the custody of the hardline morality police. She had been arrested three days earlier, accused of violating the country’s strict dress code for women. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed and thousands arrested in the regime’s brutal crackdown on the protesters.