The judicial authorities of Iran have sentenced five people to the death penalty for killing a soldier. The sentence was condemned by human rights activists on Tuesday as a means of “spreading fear” and ending the demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, News.ro and AFP reported. .

Eleven other people, including three minors, were given “long prison terms,” ​​judiciary spokesman Masoud Setayeschi announced at a press conference.

Five men sentenced to be hanged were found guilty on Monday in the death of Ruhollah Ajamian, 27, who was killed on November 3 near the Karaj cemetery west of Tehran during a rally marking the 40th day of mourning for the death of a protester. Hadith Najafi.

According to the prosecutor’s office, this security guard, who was unarmed, was attacked, stripped, wounded and beaten before his naked body was dragged into the street. He was a member of the Bassij militia, which has ties to the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic.

Hadis Najafi was killed on September 21, five days after protests erupted over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was arrested by Tehran’s morality police for violating the women’s dress code.

Almost three months later, the protests have not ended, despite the bloody repression. Demonstrators, who initially condemned the obligation of women to wear the veil in public, now demand the overthrow of the regime.

Last weekend, Iran’s Attorney General, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, announced the abolition of the moral police, which was created in 2006 and is responsible, in particular, for maintaining the obligation to wear the veil.

The announcement has not been officially confirmed.

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