Rights groups say Iran is set to execute the first anti-government protester charged in a recent wave of unrest as leaders from around the world voice concerns about the violent crackdown.
The groups, including Norway-based Iran Human Rights, quoted sources as saying that 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, charged with "waging war against God" due to his role in protests that have rocked the country since late last month, would be executed on January 14, six days after his arrest.
The ongoing protests are one of the biggest challenges to clerical rule since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian officials have not commented publicly on the reports about Soltani. But the Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reported on January 13 that the judiciary had issued its first indictments against several protesters.
'Killing Of Peaceful Demonstrators Must Stop'
Serious cases, including those charged with "waging war against God," an offense subject to the death penalty under Islamic law in Iran, would be prioritized, the agency said.
"The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as 'terrorists' to justify violence against them is unacceptable," United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement on January 13, decrying the authorities' decision "to inflict brutal force to repress legitimate demands for change."
The uprising was sparked by spiraling inflation and a freefall of the currency but has since turned into a broader anti-government protest.
Rights groups say officials have waged a brutal crackdown on the demonstrations with more than 600 people dead. Reuters, quoting an unnamed official, reported the number of deaths at around 2,000 people.
Some say that with Internet access cut by authorities to limit the flow of information between protesters and to the international community, the actual death toll may rise further into the several thousands.
“It’s about five days now that all connections have been shut down, and there is no way to communicate with Iran. They can easily kill people there without the world knowing about it,” one man, who was protesting outside the Iranian Embassy in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, told RFE/RL when asked if he had been able to communicate with relatives still inside Iran.
Demanding More Than Reforms
Another noted that the tone of the current demonstrations has changed.
"Previous protests called for reforms in Iran. This time, people are no longer demanding reform. They are demanding a change of the system," they said.
"What you see today is that people at protests are not talking about reforms. They are naming ayatollahs and mullahs whom they want out of the country.”
The United States and other Western nations have condemned the government's crackdown on protesters and previously placed sanctions on Tehran for what they say is an attempt to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
US President Donald Trump, who has warned Iranian authorities several times of "very strong" consequences if protesters are killed, wrote on social media late on January 12 that any country that does business with Iran will face a tariff rate of 25 percent on any trade with the United States. He gave no further details.
Iran Human Rights said that according to an account by a doctor inside Iran, authorities have used markedly stronger suppression methods, including weapons that inflict more serious injury than those previously used against protesters.
"The form and size of the shots fired at protesters have changed from shotguns to direct live ammunition at close range, and this change in the type of weapons was clearly visible in the nature of the injuries," the doctor said, referring to what they saw after a night of violence in the streets on January 8.
In the last major wave of protests in 2022 when people took to the streets nationwide under the slogan "Women, Life, Freedom" following the death of Mahsa Amini while she was in police custody for allegedly improperly wearing her headscarf, at least 12 people tied to the unrest were executed.
