(AFP) – Iran on Wednesday vowed fast-track trials for people arrested over a massive wave of protests, after US President Donald Trump threatened “very strong action” if the Islamic republic goes ahead with hangings. In Tehran, authorities held a funeral ceremony for over 100 members of the security forces and other “martyrs” killed in the demonstrations, which authorities have branded as “riots” while accusing protesters of waging “acts of terror.”
The protest movement across Iran, initially sparked by economic grievances, has turned into one of the biggest challenges yet to the clerical leadership since it took power in 1979. Demonstrators have defied the authorities’ zero-tolerance for dissent by turning out in protests all around the country, even as authorities insist they have regained the upper hand. Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on a visit to a prison holding protest detainees that “if a person burned someone, beheaded someone and set them on fire then we must do our work quickly,” in comments broadcast by state television.
Iranian news agencies also quoted him as saying the trials should be held in public and said he had spent five hours in a prison in Tehran to examine the cases. Footage broadcast by state media showed the judiciary chief seated before an Iranian flag in a large, ornate room in the prison, interrogating a prisoner himself. The detainee, dressed in grey clothing and his face blurred, is accused of taking Molotov cocktails to a park in Tehran.
– Blackout – Trump on Tuesday said in a CBS News interview that the United States would act if Iran began hanging protesters. “We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” said the American leader, who has repeatedly threatened Iran with military intervention. “When they start killing thousands of people — and now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that’s going to work out for them,” Trump said. Iranian authorities called the American warnings a “pretext for military intervention.” Rights groups accuse the government of fatally shooting protesters and masking the scale of the crackdown with an internet blackout imposed on January 8. Internet monitor Netblocks said in a post to X on Wednesday that the blackout had now lasted 132 hours.
Some information has trickled out of Iran, however. New videos on social media, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue just south of the Iranian capital, with the corpses wrapped in black bags and distraught relatives searching for loved ones.
– Calls to halt executions – Iranian prosecutors have said authorities would press capital charges of “waging war against God” on some detainees. According to state media, hundreds of people have been arrested. State media has also reported on the arrest of a foreign national for espionage in connection with the protests. No details were given on the person’s nationality or identity. The US State Department on its Farsi language X account said 26-year-old protester Erfan Soltani had been sentenced to be executed on Wednesday. “Erfan is the first protester to be sentenced to death, but he won’t be the last,” the State Department said, adding more than 10,600 Iranians had been arrested. Rights group Amnesty International called on Iran to immediately halt all executions, including Soltani’s.
Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights said it had confirmed 734 people killed during the protests, including nine minors, but warned the death toll was likely far higher. “The real number of those killed is likely in the thousands,” IHR’s director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said. Iranian state media has said dozens of members of the security forces have been killed, with their funerals turning into large pro-government rallies.
– Khamenei in hiding – At Wednesday’s funeral ceremony in Tehran, thousands of people waved flags of the Islamic republic as prayers were read out for the dead outside Tehran University, according to images broadcast on state television. “Death to America!” read banners held up by people attending the rally, while others carried photos of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another image could be seen at the rally showing Trump’s assassination attempt, captioned: “This time it will not miss the target.” It appeared to be referring to the assassination attempt against Trump during a campaign rally in 2024.
Amir, an Iraqi computer scientist, returned to Baghdad from Iran on Monday and described dramatic scenes in Tehran during protests on Thursday night. “My friends and I saw protesters in Tehran’s Sarsabz neighbourhood amid a heavy military presence. The police were firing rubber bullets,” he told AFP in Iraq. In power since 1989 and now aged 86, Khamenei has faced significant challenges, most recently the 12-day war in June against Israel, which forced him to go into hiding.
Analysts have cautioned that it is premature to predict the immediate demise of the theocratic system, pointing to the repressive levers the leadership controls, including the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is charged with safeguarding the Islamic revolution.
– Stuart Williams
© 2024 AFP
