The prisoners, Pejman Fatehi (28), Mohsen Mazloum (27), Vafa Azarbar (26), and Mohammad Faramarzi (28), have been hanged in Ghezel Hesar jail in Karaj throughout morning prayers. They have been arrested in July 2022 and held incognito for the final 18 months, their case marred by ambiguity and lack of entry to authorized illustration.
Shortly earlier than the executions, family members have been allowed a primary and remaining go to to the prisoners. The Hengaw Human Rights Organization reported that the boys maintained full conviction of their innocence in the course of the household visits.
The loss of life sentences have been reported based mostly on pressured confessions and defendants have been denied impartial authorized illustration all through a secret trial. The males have been additionally denied the correct to attraction in opposition to their loss of life sentences, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court inside 24 hours.
The prices included collaboration with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, which was denied by the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, a social-democratic ethnic political get together of which the defendants have been members. The allegedly coerced confessions, exhibiting the prisoners in an emaciated and tormented state, have been aired on state tv, and have been disputed by the households, who level to contradictions within the confessions.
The execution of Kurdish activists and dissidents is just not a brand new phenomenon in Iran, just lately figures have escalated. The worldwide neighborhood has lengthy been crucial of Iran’s human rights report, significantly its remedy of minority teams such because the Kurds and Baluchis.