Iran has publicly executed a second man who was arrested during unrest linked with the country’s ongoing protests.
The judiciary’s news website announced early on Monday that Majidreza Rahnavard, who was convicted of killing two members of security forces, was executed in an unidentified public location in Mashhad while a group of people looked on.
It published several images of the public execution, showing a man, whose hands were tied, hanged by the neck from a crane. Masked security forces were shown cordoning off the area, with a crowd of dozens watching behind barricades.
Iran executed the first detainee linked with the protests, a 23-year-old named Mohsen Shekari, on Thursday for allegedly attacking and wounding a member of the Basij paramilitary force with a long knife in central Tehran.
Like the case of Shekari, Monday’s execution aimed to show the speed with which the Iranian judiciary is advancing cases related to the protests, as Rahnavard was executed less than a month after his arrest.
The UN Human Rights Council last month voted to establish a fact-finding mission to investigate Iran’s handling of the protests, but Tehran said it would not cooperate with the mission because of its “political” nature.
There will be a vote on Wednesday to expel Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which UN Watch has predicted will pass overwhelmingly amid objections by Tehran.
In the past few days, Australia and New Zealand joined the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada in blacklisting a number of Iranian officials and entities for their response to the protests, something Tehran condemned.
