Justice announced on Wednesday three new death sentences against protesters in Iran, where six people were killed the day before during the protest movement against the death of Mahsa Amini, which entered its third month.
Tuesday-Wednesday night saw scenes of violence in several cities as protesters marked the third anniversary of the deadly crackdown on another movement, sparked in 2019 by rising fuel prices.
Since September 16, the Islamic Republic has been rocked by a wave of protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested for breaking a strict dress code that requires women to wear the Islamic veil in public.
The authorities qualify most of the demonstrators as “rioters”, instrumentalized by foreign powers. More than 2,000 people have been charged according to Iranian justice.
Justice on Wednesday imposed the death penalty on three people charged with their involvement in the demonstrations, said the agency of the Judicial Authority Mizan Online, bringing to five the number of death sentences since Sunday.
One of these people drove his car into the police, killing one of them, the second injured a guard with a bladed weapon and the third tried to block traffic and “sow terror”, according to the indictments.
Despite the repression, the mobilization does not weaken in the streets.
“We will fight”
“We will fight! We will die! We’ll get Iran back! shouted dozens of protesters around a fire overnight in Tehran, according to a video released Wednesday by the online media. 1500tasvir.
In another video verified by AFP, members of the security forces appear to be shooting from a metro platform at people on the platform opposite, causing screams and falls.
In Iranian Kurdistan (northwest), where Mahsa Amini is from, “government forces opened fire” on protesters in several cities and three of them were killed, two in Sanandaj and one in Kamyarana , the Oslo-based human rights NGO Hengaw told AFP on Tuesday evening.
A call for three days of mobilization between Tuesday and Thursday had been launched to commemorate the “Bloody November” of 2019, when demonstrations led to deadly violence in many cities.
The official Irna news agency reported that two Revolutionary Guards and a paramilitary were killed on Tuesday during demonstrations in the Kurdish towns of Boukan and Kamyaran (north-west) as well as in Shiraz (south).
At least 342 protesters have been killed in the crackdown on the movement, according to a new report released Wednesday by Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Oslo-based NGO.
“Physical and psychological torture”
This figure includes at least 123 people killed since September 30 in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan (southeast), after demonstrations provoked by the alleged rape of a young girl by a police officer.
According to IHR, at least 15,000 people have been arrested, a figure denied by Tehran.
In the southern province of Fars, 110 people, including 18 women, were arrested on Tuesday for blocking roads, damaging public property and throwing stones at security forces, according to Irna.
“Protesters do not have access to lawyers during interrogations, they are subjected to physical and psychological torture to make false confessions and are sentenced on the basis of these confessions by revolutionary courts,” said to AFP the director of IHR Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
He denounced the death sentences of demonstrators, characteristic of an “oppressive regime”, and said he feared “mass executions”.
Abroad, French President Emmanuel Macron praised “the courage and legitimacy” of the “revolution of Iranian women and youth”, after the reception of dissidents on November 11 at the Elysee Palace castigated by Tehran.
In London, British intelligence chief Ken McCallum warned on Wednesday of “direct threats” posed by Iran, which he accuses of seeking to “kidnap or kill” Britons “perceived as enemies. of the regime”.