Iran executed Mohammad Ghobadlou, 23, in the early hours of this Tuesday, arrested on September 22, 2022 near Tehran in one of the demonstrations protesting the death in police custody six days earlier of the 22-year-old Kurdish girl. Mahsa Yina Amini. The woman had been arrested on September 13 by the moral police, who accused her of not wearing her mandatory veil properly. Ghobadlou, whom Iranian authorities charged for allegedly running over and killing a police officer and injuring five others, was mentally ill, according to his family and his NGOs such as Amnesty International (AI). With his execution, the number of people hanged in connection with the protests sparked by Amini's death now rises to nine. One of them, in public.
According to Amnesty International, this young man had been diagnosed and medicated for bipolar disorder since he was 15 years old. On Monday, Ghobadlou's lawyer, Amir Raisian, had announced that his client's execution would take place this Tuesday, January 23, despite the fact that the Iranian Supreme Court itself annulled the capital punishment against him in February, alleging irregularities. in the judicial process. The judges then ordered a review of the case to study the allegations about the prisoner's mental health. Raisian stressed that the execution – which was finally carried out by the usual method in Iran, hanging – lacked a legal basis, which is why he equated it to a “murder”.
In an appeal to request the annulment of the two death sentences against Mohammad Ghobadlou, published by Amnesty in January 2023, the NGO denounced successive irregularities in the trials against this young man, which the organization called “farces.” The accused was not able to access legal assistance during the investigation phase, which lasted approximately a month, and, according to Amnesty, during that period the authorities repeatedly beat him and withdrew the medication he was taking to treat his disorder. The objective, criticizes the human rights organization, was to “force him to confess” that he had deliberately run over several agents to cause their death. “An expert report from October 20, 2022 confirmed that the young man had bruises and injuries to his body inflicted while he was detained,” AI highlights.
The NGO document It criticized that the lawyer chosen by Ghobadlou and his family “was not authorized to represent him in the trial held before the Revolutionary Court, which consisted of two brief sessions that took place on October 29 and November 15 [de 2022]” nor was he allowed “access to material evidence.” The man was then “placed in solitary confinement,” deprived of “access to his family and his defense team,” as well as his medication, so “his situation of vulnerability worsened,” the appeal states. Amnesty, which then points out that “international laws and standards prohibit the use of the death penalty against people with disabilities.”
The Iranian media in exile Iranwire referred this Tuesday to a letter written by another protester, who shared Ghobadlou's cell, in which he warned that the young man's bipolar disorder had worsened during his imprisonment and even alluded to an episode of amnesia in the prisoner. According to the Mizan agency, owned by the Iranian judiciary and cited by Efe, Iranian courts have denied that this executed protester suffered from a mental illness.
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The state agency IRNA published this Tuesday a video with a public confession by Ghobadlou, in which he claims that he ran over the police officers. That is the confession that Amnesty alluded to in its appeal, which stated: “The organization has learned that, after receiving repeated beatings and after those who were interrogating him promised that they would release him and facilitate his After leaving Iran, Mohammad Ghobadlou was forced to 'confess' and read a previously drafted statement in front of a video camera.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who is serving several prison sentences in Evin prison in Tehran, has condemned the hanging of Ghobadlou in a message published on social networks, in which she defines the execution as a “deliberate act of murder.” and a crime.”
The execution of #Mohammadghobadlou is a deliberate act of murder & a crime. In the face of murder, silence is betrayal.
Don't leave Mohammad's family alone tonight.Let's stand with them. Anyone in any way possible, shout: Do not execute!#notoexecutionsiniran— Narges Mohamadi (@freenargesmhmd) January 22, 2024
With the hanging of Ghobadlou, there are already nine people executed in Iran for alleged crimes committed during the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Yina Amini, the trigger for several months of protests against the Islamic Republic, the regime in power in Iran since 1979 .
These demonstrations could only be quelled thanks to a repression that caused around 500 deaths, according to human rights organizations, 22,000 arrested and the execution of the first four protesters, one of them hanged in public.
Iran is the country in the world that applies the death penalty the most in relation to its population, according to data from human rights NGOs. In 2022, it executed at least 582 people, 75% more than the previous year, according to data of the Iranian exile organization Iran Human Rights. Other human rights groups cited by Efe raise that number to up to 800 people, the majority for crimes related to drug trafficking and possession.
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