Because four men are said to have planned an attack for Israel, they were sentenced to death and executed in Iran. Human rights organizations accuse Iran of an unfair trial.
Four people were sentenced to death and hanged in Iran for suspected spying for Israel. The four men were accused of planning an attack on behalf of Israel, Iranian state media reported. The death sentences were carried out on Monday after the Supreme Court rejected their appeal, it said.
The men entered Iraq illegally from the Iraqi Kurdistan region to carry out a bomb attack on a factory in Isfahan for the Israeli secret service Mossad. The factory produces equipment for the Iranian Ministry of Defense. Iranian state media reported that the men were trained by the Mossad in “African countries” for this purpose.
According to media reports, the attack was supposed to be carried out in the summer of 2022 and was foiled by Iranian intelligence. Five people had already been executed on similar charges in December.
Confessions are said to have been extracted under torture
According to the justice portal Misan, the defendants had appealed against their death sentence. The one based in Norway Human rights organization Hengaw accused the Islamic Republic of an unfair trial. “Throughout the process, prisoners were denied their basic rights to legal representation, visitation and even communication with their families,” Hengaw wrote in a statement. The confessions of the four Kurds were extracted under torture.
Human rights activists have criticized the practice of capital punishment in Iran for decades. There are no official figures on executions. According to an annual report from Hengaw, 829 people were executed last year. Amnesty International accuses the authorities of using the death penalty as an “instrument of oppression” against ethnic minorities.