Iran Executes 2 Over Election Protests

Iran announced on Thursday [January 28, 2010] it hanged two men in connection with protests that broke out after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian news services reported.

In a brief statement, the government said Mohammad Reza Alizamani and Arash Rahmanipour were executed on Thursday. They were among 11 people the government has condemned to death on charges it says stem from the post-election unrest.

“Following the riots and anti-revolutionary and foundation-breaking actions of last few months, especially on the day of Ashura, Tehran’s revolutionary court has sentenced 11 people to death,” the semi-official ISNA news service reported.

The two men were convicted on charges of moharebe, which means to defy God, as well as efforts to overthrow the government and membership in armed groups, ISNA reported.

Since the post-election political crisis, international human rights groups have accused Iran using of the death penalty as a tool of political intimidation. Iran is second only to China in its rate of executions, and human rights groups say that it killed 115 people between the disputed June election and the inauguration of Mr. Ahmadinejad in August.

Even before that surge, President Ahmadinejad had presided over a quadrupling in executions, to 346 in 2008 from 86 in 2005, the year he took office, according to Amnesty International.

In the case of Mr. Alizamani and Mr. Rahmanipour, there was some suggestion they were not involved in the protests and their lawyers and family members said that they had been arrested before the election.

In an interview in October with the Rooz Online Web site, Mr. Rahmanipour’s lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, said that his client was actually arrested in late March or April. “He has nothing to do with the election or the post-election events,” Mr. Sotoudeh said at the time. “They tried to create fear when he was arrested and even arrested his pregnant sister.”

Mr. Rahmanipour had appeared with other political prisoners at televised show trials staged in Iran during the summer. At the time, he, like other prisoners, read a confession. Iran routinely requires defendants to issue confessions, which according to human rights groups and former prisoners, are exacted under extreme pressure tactics, like sleep deprivation and torture, including beatings.

In court, Mr. Rahmanipour admitted to being a member of small group that wanted to topple the government and said that he took directions from a man in Los Angeles to blow up a mausoleum in Tehran. The goal, he said, “was to make people stay home and not vote.”

There was also some confusion about when Mr. Alizamani was arrested, with some Iranian news sites reporting that he, too, had been detained before the protests.

In October, ISNA reported that an informed source in the Iranian judiciary suggested that Mr. Alizamani had been sentenced to death on spying and terrorism charges.

The widespread anger and opposition sparked by the political crisis has repeatedly boiled over into the streets during public and religious holidays, remembrances and celebrations. One of the biggest national holidays, the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, is on Feb. 11 and the government apparently has moved to prevent violence similar to that which broke out in December on the religious holiday Ashura when government forces killed at least 10 protesters.

The government continues to limit foreign access and independent reporting and to penalize local news organizations that offer what the state deems critical reports.

Source: The New York Times, January 28, 2010