Rights groups warn of Tehran regime’s increasing use of executions to suppress dissent, with at least 600 this year
Human rights groups have raised the alarm over the growing number of death sentences and executions in Iran, after reports that a 23-year-old woman, Najmeh Amini, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy over a social-media post.
Amini, an accounting student, is being held in Vakilabad prison in the north-east city of Mashhad. She has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and death in separate cases heard by a revolutionary and a criminal court.
A source close to Amini’s family told the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI) that Amini was sentenced to death on charges of “sab ol-nabi” (insulting the prophet). She was reportedly arrested following online monitoring by Iran’s Cyber Police (Fata). The exact content of her posts has not been publicly disclosed.
Nervous anti-Harry Potter noises
We’re seven levels deeper than “What did the Prophet literally want you to do?” Because a lot of this is seen as a very secular form of treason, subversion, or other form of espionage. Iranians are deeply paranoid, particularly of “Western” influences, because the state leadership believes it is used to cultivate double-agents for the purpose of sabotage or counter-revolution.
In some sense, it’s like walking into an airport with a big t-shirt that reads “Dis Guys Da Bomb!” and getting tackled by security. The thing they’re responding to isn’t a banal fashion choice.
If I was Iran, and the UK enlisted the CIA to overthrow my democratically elected prime minister to install a shah/dictator, because that prime minister was going to nationalize oil infrastructure to improve the lives of Iranians, I’d be paranoid about western influence also.