Supreme Court Confirms Death Sentences for Three Protesters; Judiciary's Defense of Execution of Habi Asiyoud

A group of legal researchers states that the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic has confirmed the death sentences of Saleh Mirhashimi, Majid Kazemi, and Saeed Yaghoubi, protesters arrested in the case known as "Isfahan House," rejecting their appeals. According to the initial court ruling, Saleh Mirhashimi was sentenced to two death penalties, while Majid Kazemi and Saeed Yaghoubi each received one death penalty and ten years of imprisonment. The legal advisory group "Dadban" announced on Tuesday, May 19, that the Supreme Court, while rejecting the appeal requests for these three arrested protesters, confirmed one death sentence for each of them and dismissed the other penalties. During the protests on November 25 in the "Isfahan House" neighborhood, three Basij members named "Mohsen Cheraghi, Mohsen Hamidi, and Mohammad Karimi" were killed. Islamic Republic officials attributed their deaths to a "terrorist act" and arrested six protesters in connection with it. According to claims made in this case, based on "forced confessions," these three prisoners were accused of "drawing weapons" against each other and were charged with "moharebeh" (waging war against God). The three arrested protesters denied the attributed charges in messages from prison, stating they were forced to confess under torture. Additionally, despite global reactions to the execution of Habib Farajollah Chab (Asiyoud), Masoud Setayesh claimed that the judiciary has "no tolerance for criminals," labeling the executed dual-national Iranian-Swedish citizen as "one of the most notorious and brazen criminals" without providing evidence and asserting that he had "no qualms about killing the people" of Iran. The spokesperson for the judiciary also claimed that Habib Asiyoud "took pride in these murders." The High Commissioner for Human Rights stated in a statement that since the beginning of this year, the Islamic Republic has executed at least 209 people, with a "disproportionate" percentage of them being minorities. Volker Turk, the head of this commission, stated, "At this pace, Iran is alarmingly on track to match last year's figures, during which reports indicated around 580 executions." Ghazaleh Sharmeh, the daughter of Jamshid Sharmeh, a dual-national Iranian-German prisoner sentenced to death after being kidnapped and transferred to Iran, recently expressed concern about the implementation of her father's sentence in an interview with VOA, emphasizing her lack of information about his situation. Prince Reza Pahlavi has also stated that the Islamic Republic has accelerated its execution machine in prisons, attributing this action to its "inability and helplessness" in "controlling and suppressing freedom-seeking youth on the streets across Iran," emphasizing that "this bloodthirsty regime has killed nearly 50 individuals in prisons across Iran since the beginning of May," with "almost half of the executed being our Baluch compatriots" and "none of them have had access to a fair trial."