It was a moment of horror as Iranian Government carried out its first known execution on Thursday by hanging a 23-year-old man identified as Mohsen Shekari, after a legal process denounced as a show trial by rights groups.
Quest Times gathered the protester was convicted and sentenced to death for blocking a street and wounding a paramilitary during the early phase of the protests in mid-September.
At least a dozen other people are currently at risk of imminent execution after being sentenced to hang over the protests in recent weeks, human rights groups warned.
Demonstrations have swept Iran for nearly three months since Mahsa Amini, 22, died after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict hijab dress code for women.
The protests, described by the authorities as “riots”, are posing the biggest challenge to the Islamic republic since it was established following the ouster of the shah in 1979.
“Mohsen Shekari, a rioter who blocked Sattar Khan Street in Tehran on September 25 and wounded one of the security guards with a machete, was executed this morning,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR), urged a strong international reaction “otherwise we will be facing daily executions of protesters.”
He said Shekari had been “sentenced to death in show trials without any due process”.
“This execution must have rapid practical consequences internationally,” he tweeted.
The security forces have responded with a crackdown that has killed at least 458 people, including 63 children, according to an updated death toll issued by IHR on Wednesday.
The crackdown, which has drawn widespread international criticism, has seen thousands of people arrested, including academics, journalists and lawyers.
The United Nations Human Rights Council on November 24 voted to create a high-level investigation into the crackdown.
An Iranian court on Tuesday sentenced five people to death by hanging for killing a Basij member, a ruling condemned by human rights activists as a means to spread fear and to stop the protests.
The judgement brought to 11 the number of people in Iran sentenced to death in connection with the protests, in what Amnesty International said was a strategy using the death penalty as a “tool of political repression to instil fear”.