Two at risk of execution in Iran following anti-regime protests

At least two young men arrested during anti-regime protests in Iran are at imminent risk of execution, activists warned on Saturday, two days after Tehran carried out its first execution over demonstrations sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death.

“The case of Mahan Sadrat, one of the protesters sentenced to death, has been transferred to verdict enforcement and he may be executed at any moment,” the activist group 1500tasvir, which monitors protests and rights violations in Iran, said on Twitter.

Sadrat, 23, has been transferred to Rajaei Shahr prison in the city of Karaj, west of the capital Tehran, where he will be executed, Iran-based human rights activist Atena Daemi said on Twitter.

Mohammad Mehdi Karami, 21, is another protester who has been sentenced to death and whose life is “in danger,” warned 1500tasvir.

“Mohammad Mahdi Karami’s life is in danger. He is only 21 years old and has been sentenced to death,” the group said on Twitter.

Karami has told his family that he has been “under severe physical, sexual, and psychological torture,” 1500tasvir said.

Iran carried out on Thursday its first execution over the ongoing protests in the country, hanging 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari.

Shekrai had been convicted of wounding a member of the security forces and blocking a street in Tehran, in what rights groups called a “sham trial.”

The execution triggered global condemnation.

At least 11 others who were arrested during protests have been sentenced to death and are “in serious and imminent danger of being executed,” Oslo-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said following Shekari’s execution.

Protests – referred to by the regime as “riots” – have swept across Iran since September 16 when 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Amini died after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.

Since Amini’s death, demonstrators have been calling for the downfall of the regime in a movement that has become one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979.

At least 458 people, including 63 children and 29 women, have been killed by security forces in the protests, according to IHR.