The Iranian judiciary executed three individuals convicted of participating in last year’s widespread anti-government rallies.
The three were found guilty of killing three security guards in a November shooting in Isfahan.
According to Amnesty International, they were purportedly subjected to unfair trials and torture.
Since December, four more demonstrators have been executed by hanging.
Reportedly, dozens more have been sentenced to death or charged with capital crimes.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was detained by Tehran’s morality police in September for allegedly donning her hijab “improperly,” died in police custody, sparking widespread protests across the Islamic Republic.
Majid Kazemi, 30, Saleh Mirhashemi, 36, and Saeed Yaqoubi, 37, were executed on Friday.
They were arrested after November 16 protests in Isfahan murdered two Basij paramilitary force members and a police officer.
Amnesty International’s sources say the men were kidnapped, tortured, and made to confess.
Kazemi was suspended inverted, shown a film of them torturing his brother, mock executed, and threatened to kill his brothers.
Kazemi said, “I vow to God that I am innocent,” in a jail audio message. I did not possess any armaments. They [security forces] repeatedly pummelled me and ordered me to claim ownership of this weapon.
I told them I would say whatever they desired so long as they left my family alone.
In January, a Revolutionary Court convicted Kazemi and two other men of “enmity against God,” a vaguely defined national security charge, and sentenced them to death following a four-day trial, according to activists.
According to the US-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), they were unable to prepare a proper defense, prosecutors relied on coerced “confessions,” and the indictment was “riddled with irregularities that indicate this was a politically motivated case.”
The authorities announced last week that the Supreme Court had upheld the convictions.
“The use of the death penalty against these men is a blatant act of vengeance against a generation of courageous protesters who have demanded the rights of the Iranian people for the past seven months,” said Diana Eltahawy, the Middle East deputy director for Amnesty International.
“The shocking manner in which the trial and sentencing of these protesters were rushed through Iran’s judicial system despite the use of torture-tainted ‘confessions,’ grave procedural flaws and a lack of evidence is yet another example of the Iranian government’s flagrant disregard for the rights to life and a fair trial.”
The UN’s human rights director Volker Türk called Iran’s execution rate “terrifyingly high” last week.
He called the execution of at least 209 people, mostly for drug offences, “an abhorrent record.”
