Iran: Execution of Mostafa Salehi Condemned by UK Lawmakers

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Staff Writer
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Execution of Mostafa Salehi
Execution of Mostafa Salehi Condemned by UK Lawmakers
Execution of Mostafa Salehi

The British Committee for a Free Iran (BCFIF) has condemned the August 5th execution of a political prisoner, Mostafa Salehi, in Iran. Mr. Salehi was arrested after protests in Iran in January 2018.

The BCFIF has the support of parliamentarians from different political parties in Britain.

This execution shows just how desperate the mullahs’ regime has become. International and domestic pressure stopped the regime from executing three young men who were arrested during the November 2019 protests.

The president-elect of the main opposition organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, said that the regime felt forced to go ahead with this execution after backing down following a huge social media campaign that persuaded them not to execute eight other political prisoners. It did this, she said, in order to try and intimidate and control the growing opposition movement in Iran.

The BCFIF’s statement is given below in full

“The British Committee for Iran Freedom (BCFIF) strongly condemns the hanging of a detained Iranian protester, Mostafa Salehi, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 5 August.

Mr. Salehi, 30, was according to reports arrested in the small town of Kahrizsang in the Isfahan province, during the nationwide protests in Iran between December 2017 and January 2018. Reports also show that he was charged with “leading the riots” in the city and sentenced to death following an unfair trial.

This latest execution of detained protesters is an alarming escalation by the Iranian authorities targeting those who have exercised their right to freedom of speech and assembly to participate in anti-regime and anti-government protests going on in Iran in the last three years with demands for genuine change.

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and UN’s Special Rapporteur on Iran, Javaid Rehman, should strongly condemn this new disturbing trend of death sentences and executions against arrested protesters in Iran and again demand the release of all political prisoners and arrested protesters. But they must also take urgent steps to make sure that the UN immediately sends an independent, international fact-finding mission to Iran to visit the prisons and to meet with political prisoners and thousands arrested protesters. The failure of the International Community and the UN to hold the regime in Iran to account for its systematic human rights violations is neither acceptable nor sustainable policy.

The British Committee for Iran Freedom (BCFIF) calls on the UK Government to condemn the execution of Mr. Salehi and the regime’s use of death sentences to intimidate the Iranian people and to crush anti-regime protests.

Furthermore, Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon Dominic Raab, should use FCO’s new global sanction regime to impose sanctions on those Iran regime officials involved in these serious human rights violations.

The British Committee for Iran Freedom (BCFIF) believes that the United Kingdom should lead the efforts at the international level to secure the dispatching of an UN-led fact-finding mission to Iran, which has been called for repeatedly by the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, as a way to stop executions in Iran.”

Signed by Professor the Lord Alton of Liverpool

On behalf of the British Committee for Iran Freedom

MEK resistance unit in Iran paid tribute to Mostafa Salehi, the political prisoner arrested during the December 2017 nationwide uprising in Isfahan that was executed on August 5, 2020. The Resistance Units held up signs that read: “Hail to Mostafa Salehi, martyr of the nationwide uprising.”

 

 

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