Iran executed a 20-year-old protester on Saturday morning for waging war “against God,” when he took part in nationwide street demonstrations against the regime in January.
Arvin Kheirkhah was executed at Shahroud prison, UK-based Iran International reported, raising widespread fears that more executions of protestors were on the horizon.
He was arrested as part of a brutal crackdown during January’s nationwide anti-government protests and sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court, whose practices have been condemned by international watchdogs for relying on arbitrary charges and vague crimes such as “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth.”
The communications office of Reza Pahlavi, son of late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, said Kheirkhah told his family in their final conversation: “Don’t let them forget me. We stood up for the liberation of our homeland. Don’t let the path we chose be silenced.”
Pahlavi’s office identified six other Iranian citizens who are “at risk of execution” by Tehran’s notorious judicial system.
President Trump has said Iran has killed as many 32,000 people during anti-regime protests that preceded US and Israeli attacks on Tehran in February. Human rights groups, meanwhile, say at least 7,000 have been killed by Iranian government forces.
On July 23, UN investigators called on the regime to halt planned executions for 10 men who took part in protests in Isfahan, following the July 19 hangings of Erfan Esfandiari, 18, and Gol Mohammad Mohammadi, 23, an Afghan national.
“All 12 men were arrested in connection with protests on 8 January in Isfahan’s Alikhani Square that led to the killing of four members of the security forces,” according to the UN. The UN Fact-Finding Mission said it “strongly condemns” the July 19 executions.
They were among 59 men arrested during January protests there.
The public hangings of two of those men Tuesday, Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amir Hossein Safari Hosseinabadi, prompted crowd chants from the crowd of “Dishonorable, dishonorable!” according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran group.
“The Iranian authorities are unleashing a horrifying wave of executions and death sentences to punish and suppress dissent and project an image of strength and absolute control in the wake of the January popular uprising and amid ongoing attacks by US and Israeli forces,” Heba Morayef of Amnesty International said at the time.
The news of the latest executions comes after Trump directed more military strikes on the regime — a bombing campaign that could begin as soon as this weekend — following repeated Iranian attacks on commercial shipping and US bases in the region.
