Three young Iranian men – among them 19-year-old wrestling champion Saleh Mohammadi – were hanged last week as Tehran escalates its drive to silence dissent even while absorbing US and Israeli military strikes, The Associated Press reported. Human rights bodies are warning that the death toll could climb sharply: more than 100 additional detainees potentially face capital punishment.
Qom, a city south of Tehran, was the site of Thursday's hangings, where Mohammadi was put to death alongside Mehdi Qasemi and Saeed Davoudi. Their convictions rested on charges of "moharabeh," or "waging war against God," a label the regime has repeatedly applied to protest-related cases.
Amnesty International characterized the legal proceedings against all three, and against other detainees from the demonstrations, as "grossly unfair trials" conducted on the basis of torture-extracted confessions.
Describing the killings as "intended to instill fear in society and deter new protests," Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam – who heads Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based monitoring organization – told AP the executions are inseparable from the broader wartime context of Iran's confrontation with Israel and the US.
With the threat extending far beyond Thursday's three victims, Amiry-Moghaddam expressed alarm that "executions of protesters and political prisoners may be imminent" across a much wider group of detainees.
Documented by his organization, at least 27 death sentences have been issued against people arrested during the protests; another 100 face charges carrying the maximum penalty, and Iranian state media have already broadcast hundreds of forced confessions to capital offenses.
The protests, which ignited in late December and peaked with unprecedented ferocity in January's first week, drew the most murderous government response since the 1979 founding of the Islamic Republic, according to AP.
Government censorship of the internet has made precise casualty figures elusive. Working through contacts inside Iran, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency placed the confirmed death toll above 7,000, with thousands more under investigation; arrests exceeded 50,000 over six weeks. Iranian authorities themselves conceded a figure surpassing 3,000 dead.
Even as Israel and the US subsequently launched a sustained air campaign targeting military sites and Iran's senior leadership – including the security institutions identified as orchestrators of the protest crackdown – Iran's internal repression has not relented. Since the conflict opened on Feb. 28, officials say scores more have been detained – among them participants from the January demonstrations.
Tehran's near-total communications blackout has left details scarce. Amiry-Moghaddam confirmed that Saeed Davoudi, born March 20, 2004, was hanged the day before his 22nd birthday; Mehdi Qasemi's age, he said, remains undetermined.
Amnesty's Feb. 19 letter to Iran's judiciary – a document denouncing the prosecution of dozens of protest detainees – detailed that Mohammadi was beaten behind bars, leaving one hand broken. He repudiated the charges and retracted his confessions in court, testifying that both were the products of torture.
"Authorities have systematically subjected those arrested in connection to the protests to enforced disappearance, incommunicado detention, torture to extract forced 'confessions,'" Amnesty wrote in the letter.
Mizan, the judiciary's official agency, confirmed the hangings Thursday, releasing footage of the condemned men in prison uniforms in court. Its account stated they had confessed to killing two officers with "knives and swords," with accompanying footage showing them allegedly staging the killings for judicial officials.
However, Mohammadi denied the charges and maintained that his confessions were obtained under pressure and threats. According to testimony from his family, his teammates, and his coaches, he was not at the scene at all but rather at his uncle's home. Despite this, the court also relied on witnesses whose identities were not disclosed to secure the conviction. The family's attempts to appoint an independent lawyer were denied, and the court appointed state defense counsel.
Contending that the Islamic Republic now fights for its very survival, Iran Human Rights' Amiry-Moghaddam told AP it "is well aware that the main threat to its existence comes not from external actors, but from the Iranian people demanding fundamental change."
