Iran carries out first known execution over Mahsa Amini protests

Tehran: Iran hanged a man Thursday convicted of wounding a paramilitary force member, the judiciary said, the first known execution it has carried out over nearly three months of protests.

“Mohsen Shekari, a rioter who blocked Sattar Khan Street in Tehran on 25 September and wounded one of the security guards with a machete, was executed this morning,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.

Demonstrations have swept Iran for nearly three months since Amini died after her arrest by the notorious morality police in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict hijab dress code for women.

The authorities, who have struggled to contain the protests, describe them as “riots” fomented by Iran’s arch foe the United States and its allies, including Britain and Israel.

The revolutionary court in Tehran heard Shekari had been arrested after hitting the member of the Basij paramilitary force in the shoulder, an injury that required 13 stitches, Mizan Online said.

The judiciary said Shekari was found guilty of fighting and drawing a weapon “with the intention of killing, causing terror and disturbing the order and security of society”.

It convicted him of “moharebeh” - or waging “war against God” under Iran’s Islamic sharia law - on November 1, said Mizan, adding that he appealed the ruling but the supreme court upheld it on 20 November.

The Basij is a state-sanctioned volunteer force that is linked to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

An Iranian court on Tuesday sentenced five people to death by hanging for killing a Basij member.

The judgement brought to 11 the number of people in Iran sentenced to death in connection with the protests, in what Amnesty International has branded “sham trials”.

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