Iranian Arab Citizens Arrested for Organizing Funeral for Executed Cousin

Police and plainclothes officers in the city of Ramshir, Khuzestan province descended on the homes of two brothers of Arab origin, Isa and Ibrahim Amouri, arresting them both and taking them to an as-yet unknown location.

The pair had organized a widely-attended public mourning ceremony for their late cousin, Majid Amouri, on June 7 this year. Majid was a political prisoner and had been executed in Shaiban Prison, Ahvaz earlier that morning.

A source close to the family told IranWire the brothers had been warned by security forces not to hold any form of commemoration event for Majid. Officers reportedly came to the funeral and tried to break it up, but were turned away by locals from Ramshir and surrounding cities.

At the ceremony, they said, some members of the crowd had chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic, and expressing opposition to the death penalty in Iran.

Majid Amouri was 23 years old when he was arrested in front of a courthouse after a tussle with security forces. He had gone there to protest the arrest of his teenage brother, Rasoul Amouri.

Majid was later accused of “armed action” and clashes with passengers of the car in which his brother was taken away, during which an officer in the special forces named Navid Haqiqatshenas was reportedly killed. He was sentenced to death by Ahvaz Revolutionary Court.

Members of ethnic minority groups including Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis are disproportionately subject to the death penalty in Iran, particularly in border provinces such as Khuzestan.

According to Iran Human Rights, Baluch prisoners alone accounted for 21 percent of all those hanged in 2021 though they only represent two to six percent of Iran’s population. A 2021 report by Amnesty International also found a disproportionate number of unexplained deaths in custory happened in the ethnically-diverse provinces of Kurdistan, Khuzestan and West Azerbaijan.