Iran executes 20 Sunni ‘terrorists’ in single day

TEHRAN – Agence France-Presse

A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 14, 2016 shows him and (LtoR) Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, Iran's Parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, and former judiciary chief Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi attending a meeting with Iranian senior officials in Tehran. AFP photo

Iran said Aug. 4 that it had hanged 20 “terrorist” Sunni prisoners, in one of the Islamic republic’s biggest mass executions in recent years.

The men, who were hanged on Aug. 2, were accused of carrying out a string of attacks against civilians and religious leaders in Iran’s western Kurdish region, state media reported.

Iran’s intelligence ministry earlier issued a statement detailing 24 armed attacks between 2009 and 2011, including bombings and robberies, allegedly committed by the group.

It said the extremists were responsible for the deaths of 21 people in three western provinces during that time.

“102 members and followers of the... terrorist group were identified... some of whom were killed in armed clashes with police forces and some were arrested. Some of those arrested were sentenced to death while some received prison terms,” it added.

One of the first plots linked to the group involved giving chocolates laced with poison to police officers and judiciary personnel, although no one was killed.

Prosecutor General Mohammad Javad Montazeri said the convicts, some of whom had come from abroad, followed “takfiri” ideologies, a term Shiite-majority Iran uses to describe Sunni jihadists.

In 2009, the group allegedly assassinated two Sunni religious leaders, Mamusta Borhan Aali and Mamusta Mohammad Sheikh al-Islam - a provincial representative of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts.

Those hanged on Aug. 2 did not deserve mercy, IRIB state television quoted Montazeri as saying.

“These people had committed murder... killed women and children, caused destruction and acted against security, and killed Sunni religious leaders in some Kurdish regions,” Montazeri said.

Iran regularly hangs large-scale drug traffickers. Murder, rape, armed robbery and adultery are also capital offences in Iran.

In addition, those charged with “spreading corruption on Earth” and “waging war against God” can be put to death under the Islamic Sharia, in force in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

According to human rights group Amnesty International, Iran was one of the world’s top executioners in 2015 when it put 977 people to death, mostly on drug trafficking charges.

Amnesty does not include secretive China in its figures, but the number of executions in Iran exceeded both neighboring Pakistan and regional rival Saudi Arabia.