Iran yesterday hanged a man said to be affiliated to an exiled opposition group, state media reported, despite international pressure on the Islamic republic to halt the execution.
The IRNA news agency reported that Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani was convicted of moharebeh, which is “waging war against God,” by helping the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
The announcement of the hanging came just hours after Amnesty International said Khosravi Savadjani’s trial in 2010 had been unfair.
The rights group said the condemned man’s family were informed by prison officials on Saturday that they must go to a jail west of Tehran, sparking fears his execution may be imminent.
Khosravi Savadjani was until then being held in solitary confinement at Evin Prison in the capital. Death-row prisoners in Iran are generally transferred to isolation units before their executions take place.
Prior to his death, Amnesty said the execution would be a breach of domestic and international law, as Khosravi Savadjani — held since 2008 — should have benefited from a subsequent law that imposed lighter penalties for his convicted crimes.
The PMOI was founded in the 1960s to oppose the pro-Western shah. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the shah, the PMOI took up arms against Iran’s clerical rulers. Tehran holds it responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranian civilians and officials.
Iran says PMOI members living in exile in Iraq should be extradited to face charges.
Khosravi Savadjani was arrested in 1981 and jailed for several years. He was detained again in 2008 for having contact with the PMOI and has been in custody since.
According to the Iranian judiciary, documents, including photos and papers from sensitive facilities such as military bases, were recovered when Khosravi Savadjani was arrested. These had been given to the PMOI and their affiliated media, officials said.
Khosravi Savadjani had also been accused of facilitating financial aid for the opposition group. He was convicted by a revolutionary court and the verdict was later upheld by a branch of Iran’s Supreme Court.
Amnesty International said Khosravi Savadjani had reportedly been held for more than 40 months in solitary confinement in various detention centers.
“Yet again Iranian authorities are about to execute a man who did not even receive a fair trial,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said on Saturday.
Iran remains the No. 2 state executioner in the world, after China, according to the UN.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS