Iran: a protester was executed, for the first time since the beginning of the mobilization

Iran on Thursday executed for the first time since the start of protest demonstrations that shook the country a man accused of wounding a paramilitary after blocking traffic on an avenue in Tehran, according to mizan onlinethe body of the judiciary.

“Mohsen Shekari, a rioter who blocked Sattar Khan Boulevard on September 25 and stabbed a Bassij with a machete, was executed Thursday morning in Tehran,” the agency said.

In total, eleven people suffer the same fate for their participation in the demonstrations.

An “enemy of God”

Iran is the scene of a protest movement sparked by the death on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died three days after her arrest by police for violating the Republic’s strict dress code. Islamic. of the veil for women.

According to the Judicial Agency, Mohsen Shekari had been accused of being an “enemy of God” and sentenced by the Tehran Revolutionary Court on 1 November. His appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court on November 20, making the sentence enforceable.

The judicial authority specifies that Mohsen Shekari was found guilty of having drawn “his weapon with the intention of killing, sowing terror and disturbing the order and security of society.”

“He intentionally stabbed a Basij, which required 13 stitches while in the line of duty, and blocked Sattar Khan street in Tehran,” the agency added. According to Mizan, “Shekari then tried to run away, but was stopped by the police.”

A machete in hand

In his confession, he said according to the body of the judicial authority: “After my work in the Narmak district (east of Tehran), I went with Ali (his accomplice) on a motorcycle to the Sattar Khan district (west) and he closed the door for us. intersection to cars”.

“Ali gave me a machete and said, ‘If you hit a security guard, I’ll pay you well,'” he added. The court did not say whether Ali was arrested.

The wounded Bassidj recounted seeing at the intersection “two tall men trying to block the street, and one of them had a machete in his hand. (…) I got off the motorcycle and went to see the defendant. When I asked him what he was doing, he attacked me and wounded my shoulder, ”says this member of the Bassidji militia linked to the Revolutionary Guard, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic.

Paris reaffirms its support for the “right to peaceful protest”

The announcement of this execution was widely condemned by Western governments. France expressed its “strongest condemnation.”

“We remember our firmest commitment to the right to demonstrate peacefully,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressing that the protesters’ aspirations “are legitimate and must be heard.”

Britain said it was “shocked” and denounced “the blind violence committed by the Iranian regime against its own people.” “The Iranian regime’s contempt for humanity knows no bounds,” Germany said.

After the debut of the demonstrations in mid-September, the authorités dénoncent des “émeutes”, regularly accusing the États-Unis et leurs alliés occidentaux as well as the Kurdish groups based on the étranger, d’être les instigators of the movement of contestation unprecedented.

More than 2,000 people have been charged, half of them in Tehran, since the start of the dispute, according to official Iranian justice figures.