Another death sentence connected to the recent anti-regime protests has been carried out in Iran. According to reports by Iranian state media, Amirhossein Hatami was hanged on Thursday. He was allegedly part of a group that had entered a “military-classified site” of the paramilitary Basij militia in Tehran and set it on fire.
The Norway-based human rights organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) strongly condemned the execution. Hatami was only 18 years old and had been forced to confess, said IHR Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. He added: “Hundreds more people are at risk of execution in the coming days and weeks. We must not allow the ongoing war to overshadow the atrocities of the Islamic Republic against the people of Iran!”
Earlier this week, Iran’s regime judiciary announced that the death penalty would henceforth be carried out “without mercy or leniency” for more offenses than before. In addition to espionage for the United States, Israel, or other “hostile states,” terrorism-related acts, the destruction of state facilities, and actions that create “fear and terror” among the population are now also to be punishable by death.
According to human rights groups, at least 160 death sentences have been carried out in Iran in the first three months of this year. Earlier this week alone, four political prisoners were executed within two days. The regime accuses Pouya Ghobadi, Babak Alipour, Ali Akbar Daneshvarkar, and Mohammad Taghavi Sangdehi of attacks on sensitive state facilities and links to the opposition organization of the People’s Mojahedin.
The recent protests against the regime began in late December in Tehran as a reaction to the collapse of the national currency, the rial, but quickly developed into an uprising against the authoritarian system of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Iranian security apparatus responded with massive violence against the demonstrations. According to estimates by human rights organizations, at least 20,000 people were killed, with a high number of unreported cases assumed. Time Magazine reported on January 25 that up to 30,000 people may have been killed within just two days.
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