Two Men Hanged in Iran in Blasphemy Case Amid Surge in Executions

Two men have been hanged in Iran after being sentenced to death for blasphemy, the judiciary's news website Mizan reported on May 8.

Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zare were running online anti-religion platforms dedicated to the hatred of Islam, the promotion of atheism and insults to sanctities, Mirzan said.

Mehrdad was a father of three young children. 

The two men died at Arak Prison in central Iran. They had been arrested in 2020, accused of being involved in a Telegram channel called "Critique of Superstition and Religion,” according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, who leads the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, said the executions exposed the “medieval nature” of Iran’s theocracy.

“The international community must show with its reaction that executions for expressing an opinion is intolerable,” Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement. “The refusal of the international community to react decisively is a green light for the Iranian government and all their like-minded people around the world.”

The latest reported executions mark “a shocking new low for Iran's authorities & only furthers Iran’s pariah status,” Amnesty International said in a tweet.

🧵Today's execution of Yousef Mehrdad & Sadrollah Fazeli Zare for "apostasy" marks a shocking new low for Iran's authorities & only furthers Iran’s pariah status. They were hanged solely for social media posts in a grotesque assault on the rights to life & freedom of religion. 1/ pic.twitter.com/T6eVmKqFaC

— Amnesty Iran (@AmnestyIran) May 8, 2023

“They were hanged solely for social media posts in a grotesque assault on the rights to life & freedom of religion,” the London-based human rights group also said, adding that the use of the death penalty for such acts is “another nail in the coffin of religious freedom in Iran.”

"Without urgent international action, the Iranian authorities will continue to deploy the death penalty to torment and terrorize the entire population, crush protests & other forms of dissent, and enforce silence and subservience through brute force."

The Islamic Republic is one of the world’s top executioners, having put to death more than 200 prisoners since the start of the year, amid continuing protests against Iran's clerical establishment.

According to Iran Human Rights, half of the more than 40 people killed in the past two weeks belonged to the mainly Sunni Baluch ethnic minority.

On May 6, a Swedish-Iranian dissident who went missing from a Turkish airport two years ago before turning up in Iranian custody was executed on terrorism charges after what Amnesty International called "a grossly unfair trial marred by torture and forced 'confessions.'"

Habib Chaab, a founder and former leader of the separatist Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), was accused of leading a terrorist group and sentenced to death.

The ASMLA was blamed for a deadly bomb attack on an annual military parade in the south-western city of Ahvaz in 2018.