An Iranian man was found guilty of “waging war against God” and is now facing the death penalty for giving free chocolate and hugs to anti-regime protesters.
Last month, while supporting and providing snacks to protesters in the city of Qazvin, west of Tehran, Mohammed Nasiri, 21, and three other people were detained.
Before he was tortured into making a false confession that he had stabbed a member of the pro-regime militia forces with a knife, according to friends, the police traced and arrested him.
After Iran hanged two other male protesters who were made to confess to similar crimes, he is now in danger of receiving the death penalty.
The mullahs in power in Iran are starting to repress the nationwide protests that have been taking place since September and demand an end to their rule.
IranWire was told by Nasiri’s friends about his plight. They claimed to have joined the street protests early on and made the decision to give out chocolate and hugs to bystanders.
‘In our opinion, this was the most peaceful way to protest the current situation,’ said Vahid, a group member.
People frequently offered us encouragement.
On November 12, however, a bystander let the group know that plainclothes police officers were keeping an eye on them.
When they attempted to pack up and leave, police pursued them. One of the officers hit Nasiri with an electric stun gun, causing him to fall to the ground.
The group claims that before his “half-dead” body was dragged away, Nasiri was beaten by three or four individuals.
They claimed that Nasiri was unrecognizable when the group next saw him because the police had brutally beat him.
Shortly after, the Basij militia, which has been actively involved in violently repressing the protests, was implicated in a “confession” Nasiri had made, according to local media. In this “confession,” Nasiri admitted to stabbing a Basij member.
Additionally, pictures of a man who identified himself as the victim Nasiri stabbed and had his legs bandaged circulated. This is fiction, according to his friends.
Now, he is languishing in jail charged with ‘waging war against God’ – a crime used by the regime to describe anyone they see as a threat to the state.
The penalty for such a crime is death.
Iran has previously murdered two persons accused with the same act, including Majidreza Rahnavard who was hung from a construction crane earlier this week.
Rahnavard was accused with fatally stabbing two members of Basij militia.
But human rights advocates believe he was hauled to court without a lawyer and displaying indications of abuse. He confessed, according to Iranian official media.
Rahnavard was shown hanging from the crane with his wrists and feet tied and a black sack covering his head in a collage of photographs issued by Iran’s Mizan news agency, which is part of the country’s judiciary.
In the early hours of Monday in the Iranian city of Mashhad, masked members of the security force kept watch in front of metal and concrete barricades containing a swarm of people.
Although Iran utilized the same method of hanging to quell dissent during the disputed 2009 presidential election and the riots that followed, public executions using a crane have been more unusual in recent years.
Usually, individuals who have been sentenced are still alive when the crane takes them off of their feet. They are dangling by a rope and trying to breathe before they pass out or break their neck.
In the city of Mashhad last month, Rahnavard was charged with carrying out the incident in which four fighters were allegedly injured.
He was later apprehended on November 19 while attempting to leave the country, according to Iranian officials who did not provide a reason for the assault.
For allegedly obstructing a thoroughfare and injuring a security officer at the outset of the demonstrations, Mohsen Shekari, 23, received a death sentence.
Shekari was accused of “waging war against God” by the Iranian government after it was claimed that he “stabbed the left shoulder of a Basiji” while blocking Sattar Khan Boulevard on September 25 during a riot in Tehran, according to the official IRNA news agency.
“Mohsen sacrificed his life for liberty. He wished for a routine existence. An Iranian journalist and activist named Masih Alinejad uploaded a picture on Twitter that she said was of Shekari, adding, “One more courageous person assassinated by this terrible dictatorship.”
The execution occurs at a time when additional detainees could also be put to death for their participation in the protests, which started as a backlash against Iran’s morality police but have since grown to become one of the most significant challenges to theocracy in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Considering that at least a dozen individuals have already been given the death penalty for taking part in the protests, activists worry that other executions might occur shortly.
According to court records obtained by AFP, Haidar al-Zaidi, 20, was given a three-year term for a disputed tweet that was considered derogatory to a pro-Iran former paramilitary unit.
Amnesty International claimed to have received a paper signed by a top Iranian police commander requesting that a prisoner’s execution be carried out in public as “a heart-warming gesture for the security forces” and that it be finished “in the shortest feasible period.”
The organization denounced last month’s “chilling use of the death penalty” to quell the demonstrations.
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