This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
An Iranian Kurdish prisoner convicted of killing a cleric has been executed despite complaints from rights groups over a lack of transparency in the judicial process.
Kamran Sheikheh had been in jail for almost 15 years before he was hanged in a prison in Urmia, West Azerbaijan Province, in the early hours of July 25.
Sheikheh was the last of seven people convicted of and executed for the September 2008 killing of Abdolrahim Tina, a congregational prayer leader in Sheikheh’s hometown of Mahabad. All seven people were executed in the last eight months, according to the Kurdish rights group Hengaw.
Amnesty International had long insisted that all seven suspects were sentenced to death in “grossly unfair trials marred by claims of torture” to exact confessions. Hengaw said the trials were “illegal and not transparent.”
Aside from murder, they were also accused of being Salafists — an ultraradical sect under Sunni Islam.
In an open letter years ago, Sheikheh and the other six suspects denied all charges and alleged that they were subjected to various forms of torture, including mock executions, sleep deprivation, and being hung from the ceiling.
As of July 25, at least 286 people have been executed in Iranian prisons this year, according to Iran Human Rights.
According to Amnesty, Iran carried out 853 executions in 2023, with at least 481 executions for narcotics convictions.
In April, Amnesty accused the Islamic republic of “weaponizing the death penalty” to target “protesters, dissidents, and members of oppressed ethnic minorities” and called for “a robust global response” to pressure Tehran to implement a moratorium on the death penalty.
