An Iranian court has sentenced a protester arrested during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protest uprising to death and two others to lengthy prison terms, France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported on Monday.
Pezhman Soltani, 32, was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to death under qisas, retribution-in-kind, which allows the victim’s family to demand execution under Islamic law, KHRN said.
Two other men, Rizgar Beygzadeh Baba-Miri, 47, and Ali Soran Ghassemi, 28, were sentenced to 15 years and 10 years and one day in prison, respectively, for "complicity in murder." A fourth defendant, Kaveh Salehi, 42, was acquitted.
The verdicts were issued in December last year by a criminal court in Iran's West Azerbaijan Province and delivered to the defendants in prison on January 15, KHRN added.
A separate case against the four men and a fifth prisoner, Javanmard Mam-Khosravi, remains open at the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh in northwestern Iran on charges including enmity against God or moharebeh, armed insurrection or baghi and collaboration with hostile states.
KHRN said the case has been delayed due to complaints by the men that Ministry of Intelligence interrogators used torture to extract forced confessions.
On July 14, 2024, the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency broadcast what KHRN described as forced confessions from four of the prisoners.
The group said the men had been subjected to months of physical and psychological torture at an intelligence detention center in Orumiyeh before being moved to Orumiyeh Central Prison. During this time, they were denied access to lawyers and family visits.
The five were arrested in April and May 2023 after taking part in the nationwide protests in Bukan, West Azerbaijan Province, and Baneh, Kurdistan Province.
Last December, Amnesty International warned that at least 10 individuals in Iran remain on death row in connection with the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini over an alleged hijab law violation.
The rights group said Iranian authorities had arbitrarily executed 10 others after "grossly unfair sham trials" and subjected many detainees to torture, including beatings, electric shocks, and sexual violence.
Amnesty raised concerns over further executions amid what it described as an "ongoing execution spree."
