Iran has executed two men who were convicted of “burning the Quran” and “insulting the Prophet of Islam”, the country’s judiciary says.
Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli-Zare ran dozens of social media accounts “dedicated to atheism and desecration of the sanctities”, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.
Mr Mehdad’s lawyer had insisted that he was innocent and his sentence unjust.
A rights group called their executions “a cruel act by a medieval regime”.
There has been a surge in executions in the Islamic Republic amid continuing anti-government unrest, but those for blasphemy convictions are rare.
Mizan said Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli-Zare were hanged at Arak Prison in central Iran on Monday morning.
The two men were arrested in 2020 and accused of running a Telegram channel called “Criticism of Superstition and Religion”, according to Iran’s Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). They were held in solitary confinement for the first two months and denied access to a lawyer, it said.
In 2021, the Arak Criminal Court convicted Mr Mehrad and Mr Fazeli-Zare on blasphemy charges and sentenced them to death, HRANA added. They were also given six-year prison sentences for “running groups to act against national security”. The Supreme Court rejected their appeals against the verdicts.
Credit: bbc.com
