Iran has executed three people who were accused of killing two police officers after taking part in anti-regime protests.
Champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi, 19, was reportedly killed in a public hanging along with Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi in the city of Qom on Thursday.
Mohammadi was sentenced to death in February, less than three weeks after his arrest, over the murder of a security agent during the anti-regime protests on January 8, according to Amnesty International.
He denied the accusation and claimed his earlier confessions had been extracted under torture.
But the court dismissed his claims without any investigation.
Ghasemi was accused of participating in the killing along with Davoudi, who was also accused of murdering another policeman on the same day.
Their deaths, which marked the first official executions related to the protests which began last year, were reported by the judiciary’s Mizan Online new agency.
The individuals were involved in the killing of two law enforcement personnel, Mizan said, adding that their execution was carried out after they were found guilty of the capital offence of ‘moharebeh’, or ‘waging war against God’.
Iran Human Rights condemned the three men’s deaths, claiming they followed ‘grossly unfair trials, based on confessions extracted under torture and coercion’.
‘We consider these executions to constitute extrajudicial killings, carried out with the intent of creating terror to suppress political dissent,’ the Norway-based NGO added.
The organisation claimed Mohammadi had turned 19 last week while Davodi would have turned 22 this weekend.
Protests broke out in Iran in late December against the rising cost of living before morphing into nationwide anti-government demonstrations that peaked on January 8 and 9.
Iranian authorities later launched a brutal crackdown on the protests claiming they had turned into ‘foreign-instigated riots’ involving killings and vandalism.
