Mohsen Shekari was hanged after being convicted of ‘enmity against God’, a crime that holds the consequence of death in the Islamic Republic. An absolute theocracy that hides its authoritarian nature by claiming itself a republic, has, for well over four decades, labelled any form of dissidence an act of heresy, freely dispensing death sentences to its detractors.
Since its inception, circa 1979, Iran has claimed to its ideology, Khomeinism, tens of thousands of lives, without any real accountability. And since the international community has failed in its denunciation of Iran’s crimes, it is unlikely that the Leadership, in the person of Ali Khamenei, will feel inclined to curb its taste for blood.
“The international community must immediately and strongly react to this execution,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group, said in a statement. “If Mohsen Shekari’s execution is not met with serious consequences for the government, we will face mass execution of protesters,” he added.
The Mizan News Agency in Iran had been found guilty of fighting and drawing a weapon “with the intention of killing, causing terror and disturbing the order and security of society” an “act enmity against God”. Nonetheless, Shekari’s appeal was thrown out. Tried by the IRGC, Iran’s infamous Revolutionary Guards, outside Iran’s regular legal system, the young Iranian never stood a chance. Indeed, robbed of proper legal representation, Shekari’s fate was sealed the second the Leadership’s men had him shackled.
Undeterred by such displays of violence, Iranians are pushing on, determined to dislodge the Leadership from its pulpit regardless of how impossible such an endeavour may appear.
If Iranians have yet to find support abroad – beyond the usual political platitude of support and/or promises of retaliation by way of an official human rights fact-finding mission, Iran’s counter-revolutionary movement is attracting more and more voices to its ranks. Earlier this week Badri Hosseini Khamenei, Khamenei’s sister, unequivocally denounced her brother, writing, “I think it is appropriate now to declare that I oppose my brother’s actions and I express my sympathy with all mothers mourning the crimes of the Islamic Republic, from the time of Khomeini to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei.” And, “Ali Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guards and mercenaries should lay down their weapons as soon as possible and join the people before it is too late.”