ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Tehran court handed down death sentences to four individuals in a joint trial over their alleged involvement in nationwide protests earlier this year, a human rights watchdog said on Monday, adding that the convictions were based on coerced confessions obtained under torture and were issued without individualized evidence being presented in court.
“Operational cooperation with the hostile United States and other groups” was among the charges brought by the Iranian judiciary, according to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, which monitors human rights conditions in Iran. The group identified the accused as Mohammadreza Majidi Asl, Bita Hemmati, Behrouz Zamani Nejad, and Kourosh Zamani Nejad.
In addition to the death sentence, each of the defendants was also sentenced to five years in prison, and their property will be confiscated on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security,” the Norway-based human rights watchdog reported.
Another individual, Amir Hemmati, also received a five-year prison sentence on the same charges, along with an additional eight months for “propaganda against the [Iranian] state,” Hengaw relayed.
Earlier this year, Iran faced its most significant internal security crisis in years, sparked by a wave of anti-government protests following a historic currency collapse that sent the Iranian rial to a record low of 1.45 million rials per US dollar.
The uprising began on December 28, when merchants closed their shops at the Alaeddin Mall in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, and quickly spread to at least 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces.
The protests were met with a harsh crackdown by Iranian authorities with the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reporting that as of February, more than 7,000 protesters had been killed, around 11,750 deaths remained under review, and over 5,800 others had been seriously injured.
The report added that approximately 53,000 people were arrested, with authorities labeling them as agents of Israel and the US and vowing to avenge the deaths of security personnel during the unrest.
In recent weeks, particularly amid the escalation of the Iran-Israel-US war, which lasted nearly 40 days, reports suggest that at least 14 prisoners were executed during the first three weeks of the war, including individuals convicted in connection with the January protests, according to Hengaw.
Meanwhile, Iranian Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei indicated in a Monday post on X that the authorities in Tehran are expected to fast-track trials for thousands of detainees held during the six-week war, raising concerns among rights watchdogs over a potential wave of executions under wartime conditions, as many face vague accusations of spying or collaborating “with the enemy.”
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