TEHRAN: Iran has executed two men convicted of killing four police officers in 2016 in a region hit by a wave of violence in September, the judiciary said Wednesday.
"Two members of the Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) terrorist group, Rashid Baluch and Eshaq Askani, were executed yesterday in Zahedan prison," the judiciary's Mizan Online website reported.
Jaish al-Adl was formed in 2012 by former members of an extremist Sunni Muslim organisation that led a bloody rebellion in Sistan-Baluchistan, on Iran's border with Pakistan.
The two men were found guilty of killing four police border guards and wounding several officers in 2016 in the impoverished southeastern province, Mizan Online said.
Dozens of people, including six members of the security forces, were killed in clashes that broke out in Zahedan after Friday prayers on September 30, the authorities said.
Iranian media outlets reported at the time that Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for an attack on a police station during the violence.
But an influential leader of Sistan-Baluchistan's Sunni minority, cleric Molavi Abdol Hamid, rejected the involvement of Jaish al-Adl or any other group in the violence.
After an investigation at the request of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, authorities dismissed two senior security officials in the region, including Zahedan's police chief.
The bloodshed in Zahedan came two weeks after nationwide unrest erupted over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, following her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.
According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in its use of the death penalty, with at least 314 people executed in 2021.
Iran executes two men convicted over 2016 police killings
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Iran executes two men convicted over 2016 police killings
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
