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CAIRO, Dec. 6 (AP) — Iranian authorities have sentenced five people to death for the alleged killing of an officer affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, state media said Tuesday. Eleven others were sentenced to long prison sentences.
The 13 men and three minors were accused of killing Ruhollah Ajamian, an official in the Basij branch of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards paramilitary volunteer branch, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.
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The five people sentenced to death on Monday were indicted by Iran’s Revolutionary Court along with eight others. The three boys were reportedly indicted by the Iranian Criminal Court. Iranian judicial spokesman Masoud Setayeshi mentioned in the report did not provide any evidence to support any of the allegations.
The killing allegedly took place in Karaj near Tehran on November 12 when 16 people surrounded and attacked Ajamian with knives and stones. IRNA did not disclose the identities of the 16 people. It said their sentences could be appealed.
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The sentences came amid months of anti-government demonstrations violently suppressed by Iranian security forces. The protests, now in their third month, have been sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who was detained on suspicion of violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. They have since escalated into calls for the downfall of Iran’s theocracy, one of the toughest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 revolution.
Iran’s revolutionary courts routinely pronounced death sentences. The court was established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. According to Amnesty International, Iran executed at least 314 people in 2021, accounting for more than half of all executions in Middle Eastern countries that year.
Last week, Iranian authorities executed four people accused of working for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. It has not provided the public with any evidence of the alleged crimes committed by the four men.
At least 473 people have been killed so far in the protests and subsequent crackdown by security forces, while another 18,200 have been arrested, according to Iranian human rights activists monitoring the demonstrations.
Confusion has grown over the past few days about the fate of Iran’s morality police and Iran’s strict enforcement of its strict religious dress code. Iran’s chief prosecutor, Mohamed Jafar Montazeri, said in a report published by the semi-official state news agency ISNA on Sunday that the morality police had been shut down.A day earlier, prosecutors also said they were reviewing laws on hijab wearing, but gave no indication that the country planned to repeal it
For weeks, there have been fewer and fewer moral police in Iranian cities. Across Tehran, women can often be seen walking the streets of the city without their headscarves, especially in wealthier areas. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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