Iran Intensifies Repression with Executions of Alleged Dissidents

Iran’s ruling system is carrying out a violent internal crackdown that includes a wave of executions of young people, political activists, and ethnic minorities. According to a report published Monday by The Wall Street Journal, Tehran is using charges such as espionage and “enmity against God” to crush dissent, while violating due process and using torture to obtain false confessions.

Among those executed was 26-year-old Nasser Bakhrazadeh, who had dreamed of returning to run his mobile phone shop. He was put to death on accusations of spying for Israel, a charge he denied and that his lawyer said had no evidentiary basis. His cellmate, Hamid Chafati, said of him, “He just wanted to live, work, and make his parents happy.”

Also executed was Mahrab Abdollahzadeh, a barber from a nearby village who met Bakhrazadeh in Orumiyeh prison after both were arrested over women’s rights protests. Abdollahzadeh was accused of murdering a member of the Basij militia, but in a recorded conversation he said he had been beaten, tortured, and threatened from the first day of his detention and forced to sign false confessions. He insisted, “None of the charges brought against me are true. They know it, and God knows it. I am innocent.”

Karim Karimi of the Iran Human Rights Center said none of the men had an independent lawyer and that there were severe violations of fair process, with cases rushed through revolutionary courts. The current crackdown grew out of mass protests that began in January, when the regime killed thousands of demonstrators demanding sweeping political change amid a collapsing economy. Despite U.S. efforts to support the protesters, the regime survived and intensified repression after the fighting between the United States and Israel with Iran ended. Law enforcement chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said thousands of “traitors and spies” had been arrested in recent months, and judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said at the end of April that cases involving cooperation with hostile regimes would be handled “firmly and without mercy under the law.”