TEHRAN, Iran — Iran announced Saturday that two people have been sentenced to death for joining the nationwide uprising after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June, when hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters clashed for weeks with police and paramilitary forces.
The death sentences are the latest indication that Ahamdinejad’s hard-line camp is intensifying efforts to suppress another possible round of anti-government rallies.
The defendants reportedly belong to two groups seeking to overthrow the government: People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, which is based in Paris and Iraq, and the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, a monarchist group with a base in London. Iran regards both as terrorist organizations. The condemned men were identified only by their initials: AP and NA.
The accused were charged for their role “in the post-election incidents (and) have been sentenced to death,” said Zahed Bashiri Rad, media officer at the justice ministry, quoted by ISNA news agency Saturday. He added that the sentences are “not final and can still be appealed to the supreme court.”
There was confusion over the details of a third defendant sentenced to death last week. An opposition website reported Thursday that Muhammad Reza Ali Zamani, a member of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, was sentenced to hang for post-election unrest. The justice ministry claims Zamani had been jailed before the June 12 presidential elections for his alleged role in a mosque bombing in southern Iran.
On Friday, Amnesty International reported that Zamani was the first person to receive the death penalty for the recent street demonstrations. It urged the Iranian government to rescind the sentence on Zamani, who it said was charged with “enmity against God for membership of and activities to further the aims of the terrorist group” Kingdom Assembly.
