Even the Iranian regime must have sensed that it was committing a crime in the eyes of the world when it killed Hamidreza Asari. Not just because a death sentence was carried out on him, as has been the case more than 600 times this year. Asari was 18 years old, it was officially said. Opposition activists, however, learned from a relative that Asari had just turned 17. His execution last Friday violated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, this is not against Iranian law, according to which even 15-year-old teenagers are already fully capable of committing a crime. It cannot be verified whether Asari committed the murder he was accused of; the Iranian judiciary alone is not a reliable source.
Just a day earlier, on Thursday, another young man was hanged in Iran. Milad Zohrevand was 21 years old and is said to have killed a member of the Revolutionary Guards, the second army on which the regime’s power is based, in the fall of 2022. And who was responsible for putting down the protests last fall. After the death of the young Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the moral police, people across the country took to the streets for months, Milad Zohrevand was one of them.
The Iranian leadership absolutely wants to prevent protests from breaking out again
In his case, too, it cannot be verified whether he really killed the Revolutionary Guardsman. He is the eighth person to be executed by the Iranian judiciary for a crime during the protests. The first was a rapper in December 2022, whom the regime did not even accuse of murder – the verdict at that time was “war against God”.
The Iranian leadership absolutely wants to prevent protests from breaking out again. It was only in October that a case in the Tehran metro recalled the death of Jina Mahsa Amini. Apparently, morality police officers attacked a girl who had gotten on the train without a headscarf. A video showed how Armita Garawand was then carried onto the platform by other passengers. Garawand was in a coma for weeks before succumbing to her injuries. She was 16 years old.
The streets remained quiet after her death. There is fear in the country, as Iranians who have traveled abroad describe it. The number of executions had been high for a long time. Death sentences have been carried out continuously since October 7, the day Hamas invaded Israel. Activists say the regime has executed over 100 people since then. They died in the blind spot of world public opinion.