Iran has announced the first execution of the current crop of protestors. Mohsen Shekari, who was just 23, was hanged earlier today after having been found guilty by a revolutionary tribunal of moharebeh, a crime which means ‘enmity against God’.
Other protestors have been charged and convicted of crimes like fasad-fel-arz (‘corruption on Earth’) and baghy, which means ‘armed rebellion’. Both of those carry the death penalty, so it seems likely that more executions will soon follow. Shekari’s killing is intended to frighten those who face these charges and to dissuade demonstrators from taking to the streets at all. But will it work, as the tide of anti-government feeling continues to swell in Iran?
Shekari was accused of being a ‘rioter’. It was said he blockaded a main road in the capital Tehran in September and that he wounded a member of a paramilitary force – the Basij – with a machete. These allegations are almost certainly fabricated. It is widely known that the Iranian state uses courts and punishments more as a way of sending messages of terror than justice.
Shekari’s death is simply a warning and a token of what is to come
When it has executed people in the past, like the former wrestler Navid Afkari, it has done so for transparently political reasons. Afkari protested
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