Status: 07.01.2023 1:09 p.m
According to official information, two more demonstrators were executed in Iran after the protests critical of the regime. EU Parliament President Metsola calls for more support for protesters in Iran.
The Iranian judiciary has executed two more people in connection with the anti-government demonstrations. The two men were found guilty of killing a member of the Revolutionary Guards’ Basij unit in Karaj near Tehran in early November, the Misan Justice News Agency reported. The two were “hanged this morning,” it said. This increases the number of demonstrators executed in the course of the more than three-month system-critical protests to four.
According to the judicial authority, the two men had admitted in court to having stabbed an allegedly unarmed security officer with a knife during protests in Karaj, a suburb of the capital Tehran. The security guard was a member of the notorious paramilitary Basij unit of the Revolutionary Guards. According to the Mizan report, the supreme court rejected the plea for clemency by the two accused and upheld the death sentence.
Amnesty denounces “unfair group trial”.
The organization Amnesty International had previously denounced the “quickly conducted unfair group trial” against the two men. He has “nothing in common with a meaningful court case”.
In the course of the nationwide protests, two men had already been executed in December for the alleged murder and attempted murder of two Basij members. The executions caused horror at home and abroad. The EU then decided on further sanctions against Iran, also because of the serious violations of human rights.
More demonstrators are to be executed
There is conflicting information on the total number of people arrested who were sentenced to death, as some had their death sentences overturned in appeal courts. There is talk of 20 demonstrators who are said to be on the judiciary’s death list. The Iranian leadership has so far neither confirmed nor denied these and similar statements.
Metsola calls for more support for protesters
Meanwhile, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, called for more support for the demonstrators in Iran – and for stronger condemnation of the actions of the Iranian leadership. You have to “stand up” and help the women and men who took to the streets in Iran for life and freedom, she said at the CSU state group retreat in Seeon Monastery in Upper Bavaria. These are things that are taken for granted in Europe. “But it is our job as a Union to defend, support and demand this again and again worldwide.”
CSU regional group chief Alexander Dobrindt added that there was agreement that sanctions were needed against the Revolutionary Guards.
According to the latest estimates by the US-based organization Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 500 people have died in the protests, including 70 minors and almost 70 police and security forces. More than 19,000 demonstrators were arrested.
The trigger for the nationwide protests in Iran was the death of the Iranian Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini in mid-September. She died in police custody after being arrested by the so-called morality police for violating Islamic dress codes. Since then there have been repeated protests against the government’s repressive course and the Islamic system of rule.