Sadrollah Fazeli Zarei and Youssef Mehrdad were found guilty of “insulting the Prophet Muhammad and committing other blasphemies, including burning the Quran,” and their respective death sentences were carried out Monday morning, the agency said.
According to the Iranian judiciary, Mehrdad was the creator of a “widely followed group” on the internet to “propagate atheism” in Iran. Authorities also claimed that they had found a video on the suspect’s mobile phone “which references the burning of the Quran”.
Similar allegations hung over the other convict, Fazeli Zarei, whose electronic devices were also seized by investigators, who identified a “popular account” that promoted “atheism” and “offended religious values,” the country’s justice added.
One of the suspects confessed in March 2021 to posting the insults on social media, according to Mizan.
Human rights NGOs claim that “confessions” are obtained through torture in Iran.
According to Amnesty International and other organizations, Iran is the second most exporting country in the world after China.
In 2022, the number of those executed in the country will have increased by 75% compared to the previous year, as reported in April by the NGOs ‘Iran Human Rights’ (IHR), based in Norway, and ‘Ensemble contre la Peine de Mort’ (ECPM), headquartered in France.
At least 208 people have been executed since the beginning of the year, according to the IHR.
According to the two organizations, about 582 people were executed in the Islamic Republic in 2022, a record since 2015, up from 333 in 2021.
‘The Islamic Republic has again shown its medieval character’
“For countries defending freedom of expression, these executions must represent a change in their relations with the Islamic Republic,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, for whom “the Islamic Republic has once again shown its medieval character.” . .
“The international community must say clearly that the use of the death penalty to suppress expression will not be tolerated,” he added.
Amnesty International (AI) described the executions as “shocking” and said they “reinforced Iran’s pariah status”.
“They were hanged for posts on social networks,” emphasized AI, denouncing a “gross attack on the right to life and freedom of religion.”
The Islamic law (Sharia) practiced in Iran allows for the death penalty for blasphemy charges, but executions have been relatively rare in recent years for this reason, and the vast majority of those executed have been charged with drug trafficking or murder.
For Amnesty, these new executions “take place in the context of a sharp increase in the use of the death penalty by Iranian authorities over the past two weeks”.
The increase in executions coincides with the protest movement that began in Iran in September over the death of a young Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, following her arrest by the moral police, who accused her of violating the strict code that regulates dress and requires women to dress. wear a veil.
The protest has been violently suppressed and security forces have killed at least 537 people since September, according to the IHR.
Source: DN
