PARIS: The execution of the ninth man to be hanged over protests that swept Iran in 2022 marks a new stage in Tehran’s rampant use of the death penalty, rights groups say.
The groups argue that Mohammad Ghobadlou had mental health issues and that his original death sentence had been overturned.
Ghobadlou, 23, was put to death early Tuesday in Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj outside Tehran.
He had been convicted over the death of a police officer who the authorities say was run over by a car during the protests in September 2022.
“The killing of Mohammad Ghobadlou in Iran, who struggled with mental illness, stands as a glaring injustice, a murder carried out under the guise of a judicial process that lacks any semblance of fairness,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran.
The Instagram account of 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who is in Tehran’s Evin prison, said 61 women political prisoners there would go on hunger strike on Thursday to protest against executions in Iran.
Ghobadlou’s hanging took place “under circumstances where even a final verdict for execution did not exist,” the post said. It was not immediately clear how long the hunger strike would last.
There has been a surge in executions in Iran in recent months, which activists say is aimed at instilling fear in the population.
According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group, 51 people have been executed in the first weeks of 2024 alone. IHR and other groups say Ghobadlou was the ninth man to be executed over the demonstrations.
The protests erupted in September 2022 following the death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly flouting the strict dress code for women, and were seen as one of the biggest challenges to the clerical leadership in decades.
Rights groups expressed particular shock at the hanging given that the death sentence for Ghobadlou had been essentially overturned in February 2023, when the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution and later referred his case to a new jurisdiction to deal with issues relating to his mental health.
“Mohammad Ghobadlou’s execution is an extrajudicial killing according to international law and the Islamic Republic’s own laws,” said the executive director of IHR, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
It said his lawyers had only been notified after office hours on Monday that the execution would take place on Tuesday morning.
Harrowing footage posted on social media showed his family wailing with grief at the gates of the prison when his execution was confirmed, and hours later lying prostrate on his grave.
“The arbitrary execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou dumbfounded his loved ones and lawyer, who were awaiting his retrial” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Amnesty said documents published by Iranian media show judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei had personally intervened to annul the order for a retrial and allow the execution to go ahead.
According to Amnesty, Ghobadlou had been under the supervision of a psychiatric hospital for bipolar disorder since the age of 15, and had stopped taking his medication ahead of the incident.
Before Ghobadlou’s hanging Iran had already executed eight men in cases related to the protests, with rights groups accusing Tehran of using capital punishment as a way to instil fear into the people.
Also executed at the same prison on Wednesday was Kurdish-Iranian Farhad Salimi, one of seven men sentenced to death and held in prison for one-and-a-half decades in a case linked to a Muslim cleric’s killing in 2008.
Salimi is the fourth of the men to be hanged in the case in recent months, with rights groups warning that the lives of the other three are now at imminent risk.
The executions of Ghobadlou and Salimi “after egregiously unfair trials mark a harrowing descent into new realms of cruelty,” Amnesty said.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said he was “alarmed by the sharp spike in the use of the death penalty in Iran.”
“This practice must be stopped immediately,” he said.
Activists decry ‘glaring injustice’ of Iran protester’s execution
https://arab.news/6jjs7
Activists decry ‘glaring injustice’ of Iran protester’s execution
- The groups argue that Mohammad Ghobadlou had mental health issues and that his original death sentence had been overturned
- 61 women political prisoners at Evin prison would go on hunger strike on Thursday to protest against executions in Iran
Washington presses Syria to shift from Chinese telecom systems
- Syria is exploring the possibility of procuring Chinese technology
- It was unclear whether the United States pledged financial or logistical support to Syria to do so
DAMASCUS: The United States has warned Syria against relying on Chinese technology in its telecommunications sector, arguing it conflicts with US interests and threatens US national security, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The message was conveyed during an unreported meeting between a US State Department team and Syrian Communications Minister Abdulsalam Haykal in San Francisco on Tuesday. Washington has been coordinating closely with Damascus since 2024, when Syria’s now President Ahmed Al-Sharaa ousted longtime leader Bashar Assad, who had a strategic partnership with China.
Syria is exploring the possibility of procuring Chinese technology to support its telecommunications towers and the infrastructure of local Internet service providers, according to a Syrian businessman involved in the procurement talks.
“The US side asked for clarity on the ministry’s plans regarding Chinese telecom equipment,” said another source briefed on the talks.
But Syrian officials said infrastructure development projects were time-critical and that Damascus was seeking greater vendor diversity, the source added.
SYRIAN OFFICIALS CITE US EXPORT CONTROLS AS TELECOMS BARRIER
Syria is open to partnering with US firms but the matter was urgent and export controls and “over-compliance” remained an issue, according to person familiar with the meeting in San Francisco.
A US diplomat familiar with the discussions told Reuters that the US State Department “clearly urged Syrians to use American technology or technology from allied countries in the telecoms sector.”
It was unclear whether the United States pledged financial or logistical support to Syria to do so.
Responding to Reuters questions, a US State Department spokesperson said: “We urge countries to prioritize national security and privacy over lower-priced equipment and services in all critical infrastructure procurement. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
The spokesperson added that Chinese intelligence and security services “can legally compel Chinese citizens and companies to share sensitive data or grant unauthorized access to their customers’ systems” and promises by Chinese companies to protect customers’ privacy were “entirely inconsistent with China’s own laws and well-established practices.”
China has repeatedly rejected allegations of it using technology for spying purposes.
The Syrian Ministry of telecommunications told Reuters any decisions related to equipment and infrastructure are made “in accordance with national technical and security standards, ensuring data protection and service continuity.”
The ministry said it is also prioritizing the diversification of partnerships and technology sources to serve the national interest.
Syria’s telecom infrastructure has relied heavily on Chinese technology due to US sanctions imposed on successive Assad governments over the civil war that grew from a crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011.
Huawei technology accounts for more than 50 percent of the infrastructure of Syriatel and MTN, the country’s only telecom operators, according to a senior source at one of the companies and documents reviewed by Reuters. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Syria is seeking to develop its private telecommunications sector, devastated by 14 years of war, by attracting foreign investment.
In early February, Saudi Arabia’s largest telecom operator, STC, announced it would invest $800 million to “strengthen telecommunications infrastructure and connect Syria regionally and internationally through a fiber-optic network extending over 4,500 kilometers.”
The ministry of telecommunications says that US restrictions “hinder the availability of many American technologies and services in the Syrian market,” emphasizing that it welcomes expanding cooperation with US companies when these restrictions are lifted.
Syria has inadequate telecommunications infrastructure, with network coverage weak outside city centers and connection speeds in many areas barely exceeding a few kilobits per second.
