Iran Hangings Amount To 'State Sanctioned killing': UN Rights Chief

Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei said Monday that Iran must pay fines for the delay in discharging cargos, but he did not mention why the ships are waiting at the ports.

It seems that the delay in payments has disrupted flows of goods into the country. Most ships carrying food, animal feed and commodities receive full payment right before they dock at a port to unload their cargo. If payment is not arranged, the ships wait off the coast.

“Some of these ships are paid $25,000-65,000 per day as demurrage,” noted Ejei.

Some of these goods, which are not unloaded, added Ejei, “are damaged due to long waits by the ships, but these goods are necessary for the country,” he underlined.

He called on judicial officials to follow up the case through the Central Bank of Iran to ensure the cargos would be discharged soon.

Iran's currency has dropped by 30 percent since September and both the government and private importers face a financial crunch.

Food is exempt from the US sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, but the impact of the sanctions on Iran's financial system have created complex payment arrangements with international companies.

Reuters reported on December 21, that dozens of merchant ships with grains and sugar are stuck outside Iranian ports after weeks of delays in payment.

Most of the carrier ships are stuck outside the major Iranian ports of Bandar Imam Khomeini and Bandar Abbas, ship tracking data on Refinitiv showed.

The three men – Saleh Mir-Hashemi, Majid Kazemi, and Saeed Yaghoubi –were charged with ‘moharebeh’, meaning “war against God”, a vague religious concept, for their alleged role in the shooting of three government agents during a day of protests at Khane-ye Esfahan neighborhood on November 16.

The ‘Khane-ye Esfahan case’ involves several other protesters. Another defendant, footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani, was sentenced to a total of twenty-one years in prison on charges of “aiding in the war against God and “assembly and collusion leading to security-related crimes”.

The sentences can be appealed, the judiciary said, but in other cases involving protesters, the appeal process has not overturned verdicts in sham trials.

The convictions were based on confessions made in the absence of lawyers appointed by the accused. As in many other security-related cases, the judiciary has published videos in which the accused confess to the crimes they were charged with.

Many security prisoners who have made such confessions, usually for television audiences, later recanted saying they were made under torture and duress.

In 2019, Mazyar Ebrahimi, a businessman, disclosed how he was tortured non-stop for forty days by the intelligence ministry into confessing to spying for Israel and assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.

Ebrahimi’s confessions were broadcast by the state broadcaster (IRIB). He also said the judge who tried him and others on these bogus charges, Abolghasem Salavati constantly threatened them with a death sentence to make them accept “to cooperate” with their interrogators and accept to play in the script they had written.

Salavati has recently sentenced several protesters, including Mohammad Beroghani and Saman Seydi, to death.

In a rare incident, Ebrahimi and others were exonerated when the rival IRGC intelligence found discrepancies in the testimonies fabricated by the intelligence ministry.

The Islamic Republic has so far hanged four protesters: Mohsen Mirshekari in Tehran and Majidreza Rahnavard in Mashhad on December 12, and Mohammad-Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini in Karaj on Saturday.

“Mohammad-Mehdi Karami and [Seyed] Mohammad Hosseini were both executed in gross violation of the law and their right to have appointed attorneys,” prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh said in a Facebook post Monday.

“The right to freely choose a lawyer is one of the most important reasons for the faultiness of these [death and prison] sentences,” she wrote, adding that hasty executions are “sheer murder” by lack of due process in the trials.

Hosseini’s lawyer, Ali Sharifzadeh-Ardakani, who was only allowed to represent him after the trial said that the judiciary carried out the executions so hastily that they had no time for taking any legal action in these cases. “I was on my way to the Supreme Court [to apply for a re-trial] when I heard my client had been executed,” he said in a tweet Saturday.

Sharifzadeh-Ardakani was summoned by the public and revolutionary prosecutor of Karaj on Tuesday, a day after his client was hanged, charged with “propaganda against the regime” for speaking about his client’s tortures. He was released on bail on the same day.

“I met with Seyed-Mohammad [Hosseini] at Karaj Prison [for the first time]. He cried through his account of tortures, being beaten with tied hands and legs and blindfolded, to being kicked in the head and losing consciousness, the soles of his feet beaten with an iron rod to being tased in different parts of the body,” Sharifzadeh had said in a tweet on December 18.

Mohammad Aghasi, the lawyer of Mohammad-Mehdi Karami, also said in an interview that “They executed my client so quickly that they didn't even give him a chance to write a petition for retrial.”

The Pope’s remarks are his first public comments against the Iranian clerical rulers over the protests’ crackdown.

In his annual speech to diplomats accredited to the Vatican on Monday, he said “The right to life is also threatened in those places where the death penalty continues to be imposed, as is the case in these days in Iran, following the recent demonstrations demanding greater respect for the dignity of women.”

“The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice, since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims, but only fuels the thirst for vengeance,” he stressed.

These statements by Pope Francis are expressed in a situation that the Islamic Republic has so far executed four protesters and issued death sentences for several others.

Iran has been the scene of nationwide protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in ‘hijab police’ custody in mid-September.

Earlier, the Pope had refused to comment on Iran protests and the role of women after his trip to the region.

The execution of protestors in Iran has drawn a wave of international condemnations, but the Islamic Republic still issues new death sentences against some detained demonstrators.

The foundation in a statement on Monday said The Olof Palme Prize 2023 will be given to imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, Eren Keskin, a human rights lawyer in Turkey who was sentenced to six years in prison, and Marta Chumalo, a Ukrainian women's rights activist.

“Throughout their lives and through their actions, these three women, along with many of their colleagues, have inspired others and paved the way for courageous young women and men to continue fighting for the fundamental human rights,” said the statement.

“Narges Mohammadi is a journalist and human rights activist who has been struggling for women’s rights and freedom of speech in Iran. Her involvement has led to her repeated arrest, and she has served several prison terms,” wrote the Olof Palme Foundation.

The Olof Palme International Center is a Swedish non-governmental organization and Labor Movement's cooperative body for international issues. The center's areas of interest include democracy, human rights and peace.

The center is named after the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. He was assassinated in 1986.

The annual Olof Palme Prize is awarded to people chosen by the fund’s board. The prize consists of a diploma and 100,000 US dollars.

The ceremony will be held in the Stockholm Concert Hall on February 1, 2023.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told Ritzau news agency on Sunday that Iran's ambassador in Copenhagen will be summoned to convey the Danish government's anger at the Islamic Republic's aggression against its people.

The Danish Foreign Ministry also told AFP that the meeting will take place on Monday.

Meanwhile, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib wrote on Twitter that she was "horrified" by the executions.

“Together with likeminded EU member states, we will summon the Iranian ambassador. New EU-sanctions are on the table,” reads her tweet.

On Saturday, the judiciary of the Islamic Republic executed two protesters, Mohammad Hosseini and Mohammad Mehdi Karami, on the charge of allegedly participating in the killing of a Basij member named Ruhollah Ajamian.

The execution of the two men came after a hasty trial and without their right to choose a lawyer. Many jurists and human rights activists described the trials as “unfair” and questioned the verdicts.

Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra wrote on Twitter Saturday that he was “appalled by the horrible executions of demonstrators in Iran,” and that the ambassador of the Islamic Republic in Amsterdam will be summoned.

He also said that the fourth EU sanctions package is being prepared, which will be discussed at the next meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.

The executions drew widespread Western condemnations.