The Iranian authorities hanged a 23-year-old man early Tuesday, the newest in a string of executions linked to the large-scale protests that shook the nation within the fall of 2022.
The person, Mohammad Ghobadlou, who labored in a barbershop, was accused of killing a police officer by working over him along with his automotive. His execution, a number of months after the final hanging of a protester, illustrated how the federal government is continuous to crack down on dissent within the wake of that monthslong rebellion in opposition to the Islamic Republic.
“They’re killing us one after the other,” the actor Ashkan Khatibi wrote on social media in a publish that included an image of Mr. Ghobadlou’s father, a disabled veteran of the Iran-Iraq conflict, wrapped in a blanket in entrance of the jail, north of Tehran, the place his son was held.
The protests have been set off by the demise of Mahsa Amini, 22, in September 2022 whereas she was within the custody of the morality police, accused of violating Iran’s hijab regulation. The months of demonstrations that adopted in cities throughout the nation broadened to incorporate calls for for social freedom and political change.
The safety forces killed tons of of protesters and arrested 1000’s. Most of the detained have been accused of “moharebeh,” a broad time period which means waging a conflict on God and is often punishable with demise. Iran has executed least eight people over the protests.
After Mr. Ghobadlou’s arrest in Tehran in September 2022, his mom, Masomeh Ahmadi, mentioned that her son’s actions had been affected by “bipolar dysfunction and never taking his treatment” and by the general scenario in Iran.
Consequently, he “misplaced his management and was not feeling himself through the incident,” she wrote on Instagram. “He wasn’t in a position to make the correct determination.”
Earlier than his hanging on Tuesday, she appealed for his well-being in a video that she posted on social media. “Convey my son again to me,” she mentioned. “Forgive my son, my sick son.”
Within the months after Mr. Ghobadlou’s arrest, a gaggle of fifty psychiatrists in Iran wrote a letter to the judiciary through which they urged {that a} committee of pros look at his well being earlier than his sentencing.
The Mizan information company, which Iran’s judiciary oversees, reported on Tuesday that the nation’s Supreme Court docket had upheld the decision and demise sentence after a psychological examination.
However Amir Raesian, Mr. Ghobadlou’s lawyer, mentioned on social media that the Supreme Court docket had overturned the sentence and that the final data he had obtained from the judiciary was that the execution had been placed on maintain, topic to additional investigation.
He mentioned he had been knowledgeable of the execution only some hours earlier than it was carried out.
“The execution of #Mohammad_Ghobadlou has no authorized justification and it’s undoubtedly thought of #homicide,” Mr. Raesian wrote on the social platform X.
Omid Memarian, an Iran knowledgeable with Democracy for the Arab World Now, a Washington-based advocacy group, mentioned that Mr. Ghobadlou’s execution was per the Iranian authorities’s efforts to intimidate those that opposed it.
The nation is scheduled to carry parliamentary elections on March 1, and Mr. Memarian mentioned that whereas the federal government had beforehand relaxed its repression of dissent earlier than pivotal elections to encourage voter turnout, the 2022 protests had modified that.
“That’s why we see a deeper stage of repression,” he mentioned.
On Tuesday, Amirhossein Miresmaeili, an Iranian reporter who has adopted Mr. Ghobadlou’s case, posted a video on social media of a gaggle of individuals outdoors the gates of the jail the place Mr. Ghobadlou was held. He wrote that two of them have been Mr. Ghobadlou’s mom and aunt.
“You killed him,” one of many girls tells a guard within the video. “He took to the streets for all of you younger individuals.”