Four Iranians charged in connection with anti-government protests in January have been sentenced to death by a court in Tehran, two human rights groups have said.
A revolutionary court convicted Ehsan Hosseinipour Hesarloo, Matin Mohammadi, Erfan Amiri, and Maryam Hodavand of starting a fire at a mosque in January that killed two people, the US-based Human Rights Activists' News Agency (Hrana) said.
Charges include participation in protests in the town of Pakdasht outside Tehran and throwing Molotov cocktails into the Seyyed Al Shohada mosque, Hrana said.
Most of the evidence against the defendants was based on “forced confessions obtained under torture” and “reported from security agencies”, the Oslo-based Hengaw rights organisation claimed.
“The defendants were deprived of the right to access an independent lawyer and a fair trial at all stages of the proceedings,” Hengaw said.
Iran's revolutionary courts are secretive tribunals that work in parallel to the public courts system. Trials may cover counter-revolutionary crimes and charges of blasphemy.
Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld the death sentences of Mr Hosseinipour Hesarloo, Mr Mohammadi and Mr Amiri, and their cases have been referred to a unit responsible for carrying out final rulings, a source close to the defendants’ families told Hrana. Their ages are unknown but media reports say they in their late teens.
A fire at the Seyyed Al Shohada mosque in Pakdasht during the protests on January 8 caused the deaths of two people who were trapped inside the building, the Mizan news agency, linked to Iran's judiciary, reported.
Mr Hosseinipour Hesarloo, Mr Mohammadi, and Mr Amiri were charged as the “main instigators” of the fire.
The case of Maryam Hodavand, 45, is with the Supreme Court for appeal, Hengaw said.
She is detained in the women’s ward of Evin Prison, the Tehran jail used to house many political prisoners, while the locations of the other three defendants are unknown, Hrana added.
The sentences come after a furore over US President Donald Trump’s claim that he had saved eight Iranian women from imminent execution.
Following erroneous reports online that the women were AI creations, both Washington and Iran’s judiciaries gave incomplete accounts of what had happened to them.
Mr Trump’s claims that all were about to be killed were at odds with reporting by independent human rights organisations based outside Iran, which found that only one had been sentence to death, which was subject to appeal.
Meanwhile, reports by the Mizan agency did not detail how some of the women had disappeared for weeks following their arrests and how their current conditions remain unclear.
International human rights groups have long documented violations in Iran’s judicial and prison systems, including sham trials. Prisoners’ situations have deteriorated over the course of the war with the US and Israel, as security forces have moved some detainees to undisclosed locations, rights groups have reported.
The latest sentences come as Iranian authorities continue to carry out executions against a backdrop of weeks of war and a fragile ceasefire.
Nine people have been executed so far for crimes committed during the January protests, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organisation. All the sentences were carried out since the war began on February 28.
Executions not related to the protests have also continued. Ten prisoners affiliated with banned political groups have been executed since March 18, the rights group said on Monday.
January’s demonstrations, which began with strikes by shopkeepers over a drop in the value of the Iranian rial versus the US dollar, spread to encompass political demands and became the largest anti-government protest movement in Iran’s modern history.
It was met with force by security forces when at least 7,000 people were killed, human rights monitors based outside Iran claimed. Contradictory reports put the death toll at many times higher.
