Iran issues first death sentence over protests

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Iran has issued its first death sentence over the protests that have shaken the country’s clerical leadership, as a rights group warned other convicts could be “hastily” executed.

Almost two months of demonstrations triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini have prompted authorities to unleash a crackdown that has led to the detention of thousands of people.

Some have been charged with offences that could incur the death penalty in a country that Amnesty International says is second only to China worldwide in the number of people it executes every year.

The unnamed accused was sentenced to death in a Tehran court for the crimes of “setting fire to a government building, disturbing public order, assembly and conspiracy to commit a crime against national security”, as well as for being “an enemy of God and corruption on earth”, the judiciary website Mizan Online reported on Sunday.

Another court in Tehran sentenced five others to prison terms of between five to 10 years for “gathering and conspiring to commit crimes against national security and disturbing public order”, Mizan said.

This month, 272 of Iran’s 290 lawmakers demanded that the judiciary apply the death penalty, in “an eye for an eye” retributive justice against those who “have harmed people’s lives and property with bladed weapons and firearms”.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, said at least 20 people were facing charges punishable with death, according to official information.

“We are very concerned that the death sentences may be carried out hastily,” he said. “The international community must send a strong warning to the Iranian authorities that implementation of the death sentence for protesters is not acceptable and will have heavy consequences.”

On Sunday, Mizan and other local media also said the judiciary had charged more than 750 people in three provinces for involvement in recent riots.

More than 2,000 people have been charged, almost half of them in Tehran, since the demonstrations began, judiciary figures show.

The crackdown has also led to the arrest of dozens of activists, journalists and lawyers, whose continued detention has caused an outcry abroad.

On Sunday, Iranian authorities transferred to hospital the prominent dissident Hossein Ronaghi, who was arrested in September and had been on hunger strike for more than 50 days, his brother said.

Ronaghi was taken to Evin prison after his arrest on 24 September. His family fear he could die because of a kidney condition, and say his legs have been broken in prison.

On Sunday, his brother said Ronaghi had been moved to the Dey general hospital in Tehran. “Hossein was taken to one of the departments of the Dey hospital,” Hassan Ronaghi wrote on Sunday, saying his parents had been prevented from seeing their son. “His life is in danger.”

According to the NGO Iran Human Rights, at least 326 people have been killed by the security forces as a result of the nationwide protests.

This figure includes at least 123 people killed in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, on Iran’s south-eastern border with Pakistan. Most of those were killed on 30 September when security forces opened fire on protesters after Friday prayers in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan, a massacre activists have called Bloody Friday.

Those protests were triggered by the alleged rape in custody of a 15-year-old girl by a police commander in the port city of Chabahar.

A delegation sent by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressed sadness and promised solutions in a weekend visit to Zahedan, official media said.

The city’s police chief and the head of a police station had been dismissed, local officials announced previously.