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An Iranian man who handed out hugs and free chocolate to anti-regime protesters faces the death penalty after being found guilty of “waging war against God.”
Mohammed Nasiri, 21, was arrested in the town of Qazvin, west of Tehran, last month while providing support and snacks to protesters along with three others.
Police appraised and arrested him before friends said they tortured him into falsely confessing to stabbing a member of pro-regime militia with a knife.
He now faces a possible death sentence, after Iran hanged two other male protesters who were forced to confess to similar crimes.
Mohammed Nasiri, 21, faces a possible death sentence for taking part in protests that have been taking place across Iran (file image) handing out hugs and free chocolates.
Iran’s ruling mullahs are beginning to crack down on protests that have been taking place across the country since September calling for an end to their rule.
Nasiri’s friends told of their plight to IranWirewho said that they had joined the street protests early on and decided to distribute hugs and chocolates to the people.
Vahid, a member of the group, said: ‘In our opinion, this was the most peaceful way to protest the existing situation. Often people cheered us on.
But on November 12, a passerby warned the group that they were being watched by plainclothes police.
They tried to pack up and leave, but the officers pursued them, one of whom hit Nasiri with an electric stun gun, causing him to fall to the ground.
The group says Nasiri was beaten by three or four people before his “half-dead” body was dragged away.
When the group saw Nasiri again, they said the police had beaten him so badly that his face was unrecognizable.
Soon after, local media began circulating a ‘confession’ that Nasiri had given saying he had stabbed a member of the pro-Basij regime militia, which has been involved in the violent crackdown on protests.
Images also circulated of a man with bandaged legs claiming to be the man Nasiri stabbed. His friends say that this is fiction.
Majidreza Rahnavard was executed in public on Monday in Iran accused of “waging war against God” after what activists say was a show trial.
Iranian security officers guard a crowd of people who came to watch Rahnavard’s execution in the city of Mashhad earlier today.
Now, he languishes in jail on charges of ‘waging war against God’, a crime used by the regime to describe anyone it sees as a threat to the state.
The penalty for such a crime is death.
Iran has already killed two people accused of the same crime, including Majidreza Rahnavard, who was hung from a construction crane earlier this week.
Rahnavard was accused of fatally stabbing two Basij militia members.
But human rights activists say he was brought before the court without a lawyer and with signs of torture. Iranian state media say he confessed.
Iran’s Mizan news agency, which reports to the country’s judiciary, published a collage of images of Rahnavard hanging from a crane, bound hand and foot, with a black bag over his head.
Masked security force members stood guard in front of concrete and metal barriers holding back a crowd gathered early Monday morning in the Iranian city of Mashhad.
Executions carried out in public with a crane have been rare in recent years, although Iran used the same form of hanging to quell unrest following the disputed 2009 presidential election and the Green Movement protests that followed.
Convicts are usually alive when the crane lifts them up, hanging by a rope and struggling to breathe before suffocating or breaking their necks.
Rahnavard was accused of carrying out his attack, in which four militants are said to have been injured, in the city of Mashhad last month.
Mohsen Shekari was hanged last week, becoming the first person to be executed since protests broke out in Iran in September.
Iranian authorities, who did not release a motive for the attack, say he was later caught trying to flee the country on November 19.
Mohsen Shekari, 23, was sentenced to death for allegedly blocking a street and injuring a security guard at the start of the protests.
Shekari was accused of “waging war against God” after the Iranian regime said it blocked Sattar Khan Boulevard on September 25 during a riot in Tehran and “stabbed a Basiji’s left shoulder,” the official news agency reported. IRNA.
‘Mohsen gave his life for freedom. He wanted a normal life. One more brave soul killed by this bloody regime,” said Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist, who posted a photo on Twitter claiming it was Shekari.
The execution comes as other detainees also face a possible death penalty for their involvement in the protests, which began as a protest against Iran’s moral police and have become one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the Revolution. Islamic 1979.
Activists warn that others could soon be executed, with at least a dozen people receiving death sentences for their part in the demonstrations.
Haidar al-Zaidi, 20, was sentenced to three years for a disputed tweet deemed insulting to a former pro-Iran paramilitary force, according to court documents seen by AFP.
Amnesty International said it obtained a document signed by a senior Iranian police commander calling for the execution of a prisoner to be “completed ‘in the shortest possible time’ and for his death sentence to be carried out in public as ‘a gesture poignant towards safety ‘cash.”
Last month, the organization condemned the “chilling use of the death penalty” to suppress protests.