- Since Sunday, five people have received death sentences in connection with antigovernment demonstrations.
- At least 348 protesters have been killed and 15,900 others detained in a crackdown by security forces on what Iran’s government have described as foreign-backed “riots,” reports say.
- 38 security personnel have reportedly died, according to state media.
Since Sunday, five people have received death sentences in connection with the antigovernmental demonstrations in Iran.
According to the judiciary’s media channel, Revolutionary Courts in Tehran found that one of the unnamed defendants murdered a policeman with his car.
It claimed that the third attempted to obstruct traffic and sow “fear” while the second stabbed a security guard.
Late on Tuesday, media announced that the fourth had been found guilty of a knife attack.
The death sentences, which are appealable, were denounced by human rights activists as the outcome of biased trials.
“Protesters don’t have access to lawyers in the interrogation phase, they are subjected to physical and mental torture to give false confessions, and sentenced based on the confessions,” the director of Norway-based Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, told media.
Activists called for three days of demonstrations and strikes to commemorate “Bloody November” – a reference to the deadly crackdown on the last major wave of protests that began on 15 November 2019, when many Iranians reacted angrily to a sudden increase in fuel prices.
Videos posted on social media on Tuesday showed crowds in Tehran and other major cities chanting slogans against the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including “death to the dictator”.
In a third video, people can be seen running and falling over as security personnel allegedly open fire. Another video from a metro station appears to show officers hitting people inside a train compartment.
Three male demonstrators were murdered by direct fire from police forces in the northwestern cities of Sanandaj and Kamyaran, in Kurdistan region, according to the Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw.
According to Hengaw, a Norwegian news outlet, Bukan, in the neighboring province of West Azerbaijan, was taken over by demonstrators on Tuesday night.
In Bukan and Kamyaran, “rioters” reportedly shot and killed two members of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), including a colonel.
They added that a cleric who belonged to the IRGC-controlled Basij Resistance Force died after being struck by a Molotov cocktail in the southern city of Shiraz.
38 security personnel have reportedly died, according to state media.
[embedpost slug=”iran-protests-76-dead-as-repression-gets-worse/”]
