PARIS —
Iran issued a series of death
sentences as women-led protests over Mahsa Amini’s death in custody entered a
third month Wednesday, with clashes reportedly claiming at least seven lives in
two days.
اضافة اعلان
Street violence raged across Iran as protests
sparked by the September 16 death of Amini intensified on the anniversary of a
lethal 2019 crackdown.
Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman of
Kurdish origin, died in the custody of the notorious morality police after her arrest
for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress code for women.
In widely shared video verified by AFP, security
forces appear to open fire on dozens of commuters at a Tehran metro station,
causing them to scramble and fall over each other on the platform.
Another verified video showed members of the
security forces, including plainclothes officers, attacking women without hijab
headscarves on an underground train.
Organizers of the protests have called for three
days of actions to commemorate hundreds killed in the “Bloody November” Demonstrations
that erupted on November 15, 2019 after a shock decision to hike fuel prices.
The anniversary gave new momentum to the Amini
protests, which have seen women burn their headscarves and confront security
forces on the streets.
The unrest has been fanned by fury over the brutal
enforcement of the mandatory hijab law, but has grown into a broad movement
against the theocracy that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The judiciary said on Wednesday a revolutionary
court handed down three more death sentences over the “riots”.
One was convicted of attacking police with his car,
killing one, the second had stabbed a security officer, and the third tried to
block traffic and spread “terror”, its website said.
Another death
sentence had been issued Tuesday, after a court on Sunday handed down the first
death sentence in connection with the protests that have shaken the Islamic
republic’s clerical leadership.
IHR director
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam strongly
condemned the death sentences, saying the proceedings were “unfair”.
“Protesters don’t have access to lawyers in the
interrogation phase, they are subjected to physical and mental torture to give
false confessions and sentenced based on the confessions by the revolutionary
courts.
“We fear mass executions, unless the political cost of
executions increases significantly,” he told AFP.
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