Justice announced, Wednesday, November 16, three new death sentences against demonstrators in Iran, where seven people were killed in two days during the protest movement against the death of Mahsa Amini.
The night from Tuesday to Wednesday saw scenes of violence in several cities. The demonstrators marked in parallel the third anniversary of another movement, that of 2019, triggered by the rise in fuel prices, also repressed in blood.
Later on Wednesday, assailants on motorcycles opened fire on protesters and law enforcement at a market in the southwestern Iranian city of Izeh, killing six and at least ten injured, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (or IRNA, for Islamic Republic News Agency, in English). This attack, attributed by the authorities to “terrorist elements”, has not been claimed. Three people were arrested, IRNA said.
Since September 16, the Islamic Republic has been rocked by a wave of protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested for breaking a strict dress code that requires women to wear the Islamic veil in public.
Five convictions since Sunday
Authorities describe most of the protesters as“rioters”, exploited by foreign powers. Justice on Wednesday imposed the death penalty on three people charged with their involvement in the demonstrations, said the agency of the Judicial Authority Mizan Online, bringing to five the number of death sentences since Sunday.
One of these people drove his car into the police, killing one of them, the second injured a guard with a bladed weapon and the third tried to block traffic and ” spreading terror “, according to the indictments. Despite the repression, the mobilization does not weaken in the streets.
“We will fight! We will die! We will get Iran back! »shouted dozens of protesters around a fire in the night in Tehran, according to a video released on Wednesday by the online media 1500tasvir. In Iranian Kurdistan (north-west), where Mahsa Amini was from, “Government forces opened fire” on protesters in several towns and three of them were killed, two in Sanandaj and one in Kamyarana, the Oslo-based non-governmental human rights organization Hengaw said on Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday, a protester, Burhan Karmi, was killed outside the house of the man killed the day before in Kamyarana, Fuad Mohammadi, a shopkeeper, whose relatives had gathered for his funeral, according to Hengaw. “Our brother Fuad is a hero, the martyr of Kurdistan”shouted the crowd, according to videos posted online.
A call for three days of mobilization between Tuesday and Thursday had been launched to commemorate the “Bloody November” of 2019, when protests led to deadly violence in many cities.
Fear of “mass executions”
The official IRNA news agency reported that two Revolutionary Guards and a paramilitary were killed on Tuesday during protests in the Kurdish towns of Boukan and Kamyaran (northwest) as well as Shiraz (south).
At least 342 protesters have been killed in the crackdown on the movement, according to a new report released Wednesday by Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Oslo-based NGO. According to IHR, at least 15,000 people have been arrested, a figure denied by Tehran.
In the southern province of Fars, 110 people, including 18 women, were arrested on Tuesday for blocking roads, damaging public property and throwing stones at security forces, according to IRNA.
“Protesters do not have access to lawyers during interrogations, they are subjected to physical and psychological torture to make false confessions and are sentenced on the basis of these confessions by revolutionary courts”, said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. He denounced the death sentences of demonstrators, characteristic of a “oppressive regime”and said to fear “mass executions”.
In London, the head of the British intelligence services, Ken McCallum, warned on Wednesday against the “direct threats” posed by Iran, which he accuses of seeking to “kidnap or kill” of the British “perceived as enemies of the regime”.