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Fears are growing that Iran is preparing to execute scores more protesters after authorities hanged a 23-year-old man from a crane, in a public killing carried out less than a month after he was arrested and following a secretive trial.
Majidreza Rahnavard was sentenced to death by a court in the city of Mashhad, a centre of the protests, for allegedly killing two members of the paramilitary Basij force and wounding four others. The Basij, affiliated with the country’s feared Revolutionary Guards, has been at the forefront of the state crackdown.
The pro-government Mizan news agency published a collage of images of Rahnavard hanging from a metal crane, his hands and feet bound, a black bag over his head. Masked security force members stood guard in front of concrete and metal barriers that held back a crowd early on Monday morning.
Rahnavard was not allowed to choose his own lawyer, challenge the evidence against him or ask for the trial to be held in public.
Iranian activist network, 1500tasvir, said Rahnavard’s mother was allowed to visit him the night before he was hanged. Neither was aware of his imminent execution, according to the group, which posted a photo on Twitter of the two hugging and smiling.
Iran has carried out public hangings in the past, most infamously in the 1980s during a mass purge of dissidents and after the disputed 2009 presidential election, but they have become rare in recent years.
State TV showed a video in which Rahnavard said in the court that he came to hate the Basij forces after seeing them beating and killing protesters in videos posted on social media. Activists said he was forced to confess under torture, providing a photo of him with his arm in a sling. An internet blackout and restrictions on reporting make it impossible to corroborate claims out of Iran.
The director of the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, warned that the public execution of a young man so soon after his arrest indicated “a significant escalation of the level of violence against protesters”.
