Protesters in Iran fight against the death penalty as they await executions.
Mohammad Boroughani he is 19 years old, Mohammad Ghobadlou he is 22. They are being held in the Gohardasht prison in Karaj, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the capital Tehran. activists of Iran Human rights activists say they were transferred to solitary confinement on Saturday, widely seen as a preparation for their executions.
Over the weekend, Boroughani’s mother announced on social media that the government had informed her that her son would be executed. On Saturday, she and other relatives of the youths gathered outside the prison. Others soon joined them and the gathering turned into a protest against Iran’s regime, complete with anti-government chants. Prison security forces fired into the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Videos of the event quickly went viral.
“The Iranian authorities must execute, they must implement these death sentences to sow fear in society because they have failed to control the protests,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based organization Iran Human Rights, told DW.
“But we have to keep in mind that we don’t have rule of law and due process in Iran,” he said. “So the international reactions, the pressure, can still save the lives of Mohammad Ghobadlou and Mohammad Boroughani.”
Sanctions for the Revolutionary Guard?
Ghobadlou was arrested in Tehran in September, shortly after nationwide protests broke out following the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s moral police. He is accused of having run over a policeman.
Boroughani was arrested in Karaj and sentenced to death for burning down a government building and wounding a member of Iran’s volunteer Basij militia. The Basij are part of the Revolutionary Guard, and its plainclothes members are often used to violently suppress demonstrations. The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military unit of Iran’s army, was founded after the 1979 Islamic Revolution by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and reports directly to the current Supreme Leader, Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian rights activists like Amiry-Moghaddam have called on the European Union to include the Revolutionary Guards on its terrorist list. The United States classified the team as a terrorist organization in 2019. “I think a practical consequence of the two recent executions could be to put the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, on a sanctions list or a terrorist list, and also impose sanctions to all”. entities under the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei,” he said.
“We are already sanctioning the Revolutionary Guards for the weapons of mass destruction that they are developing,” Hannah Neumann, a member of Germany’s Green Party and a member of the European Parliament, told DW. “We are also individually sanctioning several of the key players in the Revolutionary Guard. And, yes, right now we are working on legal avenues, but we are also, and that is part of the truth, working on political compromises so that we can finally call them for what they are, a terrorist organization.”
Asked whether Germany should break diplomatic relations with Iran, Neumann said: “I think it is important that our embassy in Tehran continue its work, continue to provide us with information, continue to support the protesters and continue to provide visas for those who want to leave the country. country”.
Germany urges Iran to “immediately release” prisoners
Political prisoners are receiving support from members of the Bundestag such as Helge Limburg, a member of the Green Party who declared himself a patron of Mohammad Mehdi Karami. Despite Limburg’s efforts, the 22-year-old karate champion was executed on Saturday along with 20-year-old Seyed Mohammad Hosseini.
Limburg said it was a “terrifying moment” when he received the news of Iran’s execution. He told DW that people in Iran and around the world would not remain silent, adding that the role of the sponsors was to expose “special cases” that the Iranian authorities are trying to keep hidden.
“And we try to go public, to bring to the world what happens in Iran and put names in the faces of the activists in Iran who are being tortured, imprisoned, unfairly tried,” Limburg said.
Iran’s government has sentenced 17 people to death since the protests began in September. Four executions have been carried out since December, which has not put an end to the protests.
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“The German federal government condemns in the strongest terms Iran’s continued reliance on the death penalty as a means of repression,” spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in Berlin. He “again strongly urged” the Tehran regime not to carry out any further executions and to immediately abolish the death penalty.
Hebestreit said that Germany and its partners would continue to increase the pressure on Tehran. “We call on Iran to immediately release all illegally detained prisoners,” he said.
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