Tehran issues horrific warning
Iranian, hanged from a crane, is the second to be executed for crimes allegedly committed during protests.
DUBAI — Iran executed a second prisoner Monday convicted of crimes allegedly committed during the nationwide protests challenging the country’s theocracy, publicly hanging him from a construction crane as a gruesome warning to others.
The execution of Majidreza Rahnavard in northeastern Iran came less than a month after he allegedly fatally stabbed two members of a paramilitary force after purportedly becoming angry about Iranian security forces’ killing of protesters.
The development underscores the speed with which Iran is carrying out death sentences handed down to those detained in the demonstrations, which the government is trying to suppress.
Activists warn that at least a dozen people already have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings. At least 488 people have been killed since the demonstrations began in mid-September, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that’s been monitoring the protests. An additional 18,200 people have been detained by authorities.
Iran’s Mizan news agency, which falls under the country’s judiciary, published a collage of images of Rahnavard hanging from the crane, his hands and feet bound, a black bag over his head.
Masked security force members stood guard in front of concrete and metal barriers that held back a crowd early Monday in the city of Mashhad.
Mizan alleged that Rahnavard had stabbed two security force members to death Nov. 17 in Mashhad and wounded four others.
Video aired on state TV showed a man chasing another around a street corner, then standing over him and stabbing him after he fell against a parked motorbike. Another showed the same man stabbing another immediately after. The assailant, who state TV alleged was Rahnavard, then fled.
The Mizan report identified the dead as “student” members of the Basij, paramilitary volunteers under Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Basij have been deployed in major cities, attacking and detaining protesters, who in many cases have fought back.
A heavily edited state television report aired after Rahnavard’s execution showed clips of him in the courtroom. In the report, he says he came to hate the Basijis after seeing video on social media of the forces beating and killing protesters.
The Mizan report accused Rahnavard of trying to flee to a foreign country when he was arrested.
Mashhad, a Shiite holy city, lies 460 miles east of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Activists say it has seen strikes, shop closures and demonstrations amid the unrest that began over the Sept. 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by Iran’s morality police.
Mizan said Rahnavard was convicted in Mashhad’s Revolutionary Court. The tribunals have been internationally criticized for not allowing those on trial to pick their own lawyers or even see the evidence against them.
Rahnavard was convicted of moharebeh, a Persian word meaning “waging war against God.” That charge has been levied against others in the decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and carries the death penalty.
Executions conducted in public with a crane have been rare in recent years, though Iran used the same method to put down unrest after the disputed 2009 presidential election and the Green Movement protests that followed.
Activists have put pressure on companies providing cranes to Iran in the past, warning that they can be used for executions.
From Brussels, the European Union’s foreign ministers expressed dismay at the latest execution. The bloc is to approve a fresh series of sanctions against Iran over its crackdown on protesters, and also for supplying drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat said.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that he spoke to Iran’s foreign minister regarding Tehran’s response to the protests and the latest execution and that it was “not an easy conversation.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described the execution as “a blatant attempt at intimidation” of Iranians.
“We are making clear that we stand beside innocent people in Iran,” Baerbock said as she arrived at the Brussels meeting. “A system that treats its people in this way cannot expect to continue to have halfway-normal relations with the European Union.”
Iran is one of the world’s top executioners and typically kills prisoners by hanging. On Thursday, it carried out its first known execution of a prisoner detained during demonstrations. So far this year, it has executed more than 500 prisoners, the highest number in five years, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights.
“In the absence of serious measures to deter the Islamic Republic from executing protesters, we will be facing even more horrific crimes like the 1980s mass execution of political prisoners,” the group warned Monday. That refers to the 1988 executions in part overseen by Iran’s current hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, a former chief of the judiciary; activists believe as many as 5,000 inmates were put to death.