The Iranian authorities executed a 34-year-old man on Tuesday who was arrested during nationwide protests that shook the country in 2022 and who had been sentenced to death in a trial that rights groups condemned as unfair.
The Mizan news agency, which is overseen by Iran’s judiciary, reported that the man, Reza Rasaei, was executed on Tuesday morning at a prison in the city of Kermanshah.
The execution of Mr. Rasaei comes just weeks after Iran elected a reformist president in a vote that was largely seen as a rejection of hard-line conservative political factions that governed the country during the 2022 upheaval. Rights groups were quick to note that the execution of Mr. Rasaei suggested that real change was not necessarily to be expected.
Amnesty International, the human rights organization, said Mr. Rasaei’s execution was carried out in secrecy after a “sham trial” and without prior notice to his family or lawyers.
The execution “highlights the Iranian authorities’ deadly resolve to use the death penalty as a tool of political repression to instill fear among the population,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement. “It also dispels any illusions of human rights progress with a new president assuming power.”
Mr. Rasaei was one of the tens of thousands of Iranians who took to the streets in 2022 in antigovernment protests spurred by the death of a 22-year-old woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police. The Iranian authorities arrested more than 18,000 people in a sweeping crackdown on the monthslong demonstrations.
Mr. Rasaei was arrested in November 2022 in the town of Shahriar, about 20 miles west of the capital, Tehran, according to Amnesty International, one of several rights groups that advocated his release.
It said that the Iranian authorities later accused Mr. Rasaei of playing a role in the death of a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard during the protests. Mr. Rasaei denied the charges, Amnesty International said, and was subjected to ill-treatment and torture while in prison.
Mr. Rasaei was convicted of murder in October 2023 by a court in Kermanshah Province after a trial that was marred by irregularities, according to Amnesty International and Dadban, a group of pro bono lawyers who represent Iranian political prisoners. He was later sentenced to death.
In a message posted on social media on Tuesday, Dadban announced that Mr. Rasaei had been executed and noted that he had maintained his innocence until his death.
Mr. Rasaei belonged to Iran’s Kurdish minority, which accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s population and has long suffered discrimination. The woman whose death led to the 2022 protests, Mahsa Amini, was also a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority.
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