Ayatollah Khamenei. Image Credit: Tasnim News, CC BY 4.0.
Iran on Sunday issued its first deaths sentence linked to the anti-regime protests that have followed the death of Mahsa Amini in September.
The accused was sentenced in a Tehran court to death for the crime of “setting fire to a government building, disturbing public order, assembly and conspiracy to commit a crime against national security, and an enemy of God and corruption on earth”, one of the most serious offences under Iranian law.
Another court in Tehran sentenced five protestors to prison terms of between 5-10 years, for the crime of “gathering and conspiring to commit crimes against national security and disturbing public order”.
Dozens of people, largely protestors, have been killed during the protests, which the authorities have branded as “riots”.
Reports on Sunday claimed that the judiciary had charged more than 750 people in three provinces for involvement in such incidents.
Some 2,000 other people, nearly half of them in Tehran, had already been charged since the demonstrations began in mid-September.
Another 276 people were charged in the central province of Markazi, where 100 young people were released after signing pledges not to participate in any future “riots”, according to state new agency IRNA.