New Delhi: Iran on Monday carried out the execution of a second prisoner detained and convicted amid nationwide protests opposing the country’s theocracy. Iran claimed the footage aired on state television showed him stabbing two guards to death and running away, news agency AFP reported.
The man was executed in public on Monday for killing two security guards and wounding four other people, judicial news agency Mizan Online informed.
It is the second execution after Mohsen Shekari last week was hanged to death over anti-government protests that gripped the country after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody for allegedly violating the country's strict female dress code.
Majidreza Rahnavard has been publicly hanged less than a month after he allegedly stabbed two security officials. The execution comes displays the speed at which Iran now carries out death sentences handed down for those detained in the demonstrations the government hopes to put down.
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Rahnavard has been accused of stabbing two security force members to death on November 17 in Mashhad and wounded four others, according to Iran’s Mizan news agency under the country’s judiciary.
Mashhad, a Shiite holy city, is located some 740 km east of Tehran.
A man was seen chasing another around a street corner in the aired footage where he stabs him after falling against a parked motorbike. Another footage showed the same man stabbing another person and he fled immediately after. The state TV alleged the assailant to be identified as Rahnavard.
Mashhad’s Revolutionary Court convicted Rahnavard on the charge of “moharebeh,” a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God.” That charge has been levied against others in the decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and carries the death penalty.
The report identified the dead as “student” Basij, paramilitary volunteers under Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Basij (ba-SEEJ’) have deployed in major cities, attacking and detaining protesters, who in many cases have fought back.
However, the report doesn’t elaborate on the motive for Rahnavard’s alleged attack. Rahnavard has been accused of fleeing to a foreign country after his arrest.
Meanwhile, activists warn that at least a dozen people already have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings. At least 488 people have been killed since the protests began in mid-September, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group tracking the protests. Another 18,200 people have been detained by authorities.