Iran executes man, 23, for allegedly stabbing pro-regime officer

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Iran has executed a 23-year-old man for allegedly stabbing a pro-regime militia officer with a machete and blocking a street in the capital, in what appears to be the first execution of a demonstrator involved in recent protests that have rocked the country.

As many as 21 people have now been charged with sentences likely to carry the death penalty, and hundreds of others have been killed during the protests.

Iranian judicial news agencies said the executed man, Mohsen Shekari, was found guilty of blocking traffic on 25 September and then striking a member of the pro-regime Basij militia, leading him to need 13 stitches in his left shoulder.

He allegedly confessed that he had been encouraged to go to the protests by a friend who offered him a bribe to hit a police officer. The court found that he had used the weapon “with the intention of killing, causing terror and disturbing the order and security of society”.

It convicted him of “moharebeh” – or waging “war against God” under Iran’s Islamic sharia law.

His case had been subject to appeal, but he was not represented by his lawyer. His family were outside the jail where he was executed seeking news of his fate.

On Monday, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a branch of the military, praised the judiciary for its tough stand and urged it to move swiftly and decisively issue judgments for defendants accused of “crimes against the security of the nation and Islam”.

The spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary, Masoud Setayeshi, announced on Tuesday that five people indicted in the killing of a Basij member, Rouhollah Ajamian, were sentenced to death in a verdict which they can appeal.

Amnesty International condemned the sentences. “The Iranian authorities must immediately quash all death sentences, refrain from seeking the imposition of the death penalty and drop all charges against those arrested in connection with their peaceful participation in protests,” it said.

Interviewed in the reformist newspaper, Etemad, Taghi Azadarmaki, a sociology professor, said: “If the system punishes the protesters, people’s behaviour will become radical and their patience will end. The news of issuing death sentences and long-term prisons is dangerous. If this trend continues, people will tend towards fundamentalist changes.”

In a move to engage with students who have been at the heart of the protests, senior politicians went to the campus at the University of Tehran on the annual students’ day this week to try to launch a dialogue with students. But the mayor of Tehran was confronted with students who accused the regime of corruption and lies. He angrily shouted at the students when a group walked out demanding the release of their fellow students.

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, was equally uncompromising, arriving to address an almost entirely male audience during an event held with tight security at the University of Tehran. He said the protests had nothing to do with economic or cultural grievances, but were a plot by the US to bring down Iran.