Kurdish Prisoner Executed After 14 Years’ Incarceration

Sunni Kurd and political prisoner Anwar Khezri was executed on Wednesday after 14 years of imprisonment as Iran continues its wave of executions.

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that the death sentence was carried out at Karaj's Ghezel-Hesar Prison.

Khezri was part of a case involving six other Sunni minority individuals, four of whom have already been executed.

They were detained in December 2009 on charges related to the murder of Abdolrahim Tina, the Imam of a mosque in Mahabad, who was assassinated by unidentified individuals in 2008.

The seven were charged with "acts against national security," "propaganda against the system," "membership in Salafi groups," and "waging war against God and corruption on earth."

After being initially sentenced to death in 2017, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and referred the case to Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran for further review. They were, however, sentenced to death again by Branch 15 in June 2018. The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences in February 2020.

In November, Ghasem Abasteh and Ayoub Karimi were executed, and in January, Davoud Abdollahi and Farhad Salimi. Following Khezri's execution, two others, Khosrow Besharat, and Kamran Sheykha, face the same fate.

According to Amnesty International, the seven Sunni Kurds were at risk of execution in February 2021 due to their unfair trials and tortured confessions.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned the severe torture inflicted on the prisoners and the forced confessions extracted from them.

Minority Kurds in Iran have suffered massive persecution since the founding of the Islamic Republic. Of the more than 800 record high executions last year, huge numbers of those were Kurdish.