In Iran, the sanctions continue to rain down. Five people were sentenced to death, and eleven to “long prison sentences”, including three minors, for the murder of a paramilitary during demonstrations in the country, announced Tuesday, December 6 the spokesman for the judicial authority. These latest verdicts bring to eleven the number of people sentenced to death in connection with the unrest that has shaken Iran for more than two months.
The five death row prisoners were found guilty on Monday of the November death of Ruhollah Ajamian, a member of the basijmilitia linked to the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, said during a press conference Massoud Setayeshi.
On the same day, the Revolutionary Guards announced the arrest of twelve people accused of belonging to a “group of saboteurs” with links to European countries. “The members of this network, under the leadership of counter-revolutionary agents living in Germany and the Netherlands, attempted to obtain arms and intended (…) to carry out activities against national security”said the Revolutionary Guards of the province of Markazi (center) in a statement quoted by the Tasnim agency, also warning against other “terrorist actions”.
More than three hundred people were killed
On Monday, the deputy director of the Iranian news agency Fars, close to the authorities, was arrested “for falsifying news”announced the public broadcaster IRIB.
According to this, “he is still in custody so that we can know the reasons why he faked the news and created fake news bulletins”. These are confidential bulletins distributed to certain subscribers. On November 26, Fars announced on his Telegram channel that “user access” to his site “had been disturbed” after “a complex hacking and cyberattack operation”. A group calling itself “Black Reward” claimed responsibility for the cyberattack, saying it had access to dozens of confidential documents.
Iran has been the scene of protests since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died three days after her arrest in Tehran by vice police. The latter accused him of having violated the strict dress code of the Islamic Republic.
More than three hundred people have been killed in the unrest, including dozens of members of the security forces, a Revolutionary Guard general said last week. Thousands of people including journalists, actors and lawyers have also been arrested during the demonstrations, generally called “riots” by the authorities, who regularly accuse the United States and its Western allies as well as Kurdish groups based abroad for being the instigators of this unprecedented protest movement.