Iran executes man over killing of colonel in 2022 Mahsa Amini protests

Iran executed a man on Tuesday after the courts convicted him of killing a Revolutionary Guards officer during nationwide protests in 2022, the judiciary said.

“Gholamreza Rasaei, was executed this morning (Tuesday) in Kermanshah prison” in western Iran for “stabbing to death a Revolutionary Guards colonel during the illegal protests in November 2022”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

The colonel, Nader Bayrami, was in charge of the Guards’ intelligence unit in Sahneh city of Kermanshah province in Iran’s Kurdish region, according to the Tasnim news agency.

The country’s Kurdish region was one of the centres of the protests that followed the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd.

Amini, 22, had been arrested in Tehran for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress code for women.

Hundreds of people were killed, including dozens of security personnel, and thousands more arrested over what officials labelled as foreign-instigated “riots”.

Mizan said Rasaei was sentenced to death in October 2023 in accordance with Sharia law on “retribution” and the verdict was later upheld by the Iranian supreme court.

His execution brings to 10 the number of people executed on charges of murder or other violence against security force personnel during the protests

Covering the neck and head has been compulsory for women in Iran since a few years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

For a while after the protests, women increasingly flouted the dress code but in recent months police have taken tougher steps against women who ignore the rules.

Iran executes more people per year than any other nation except China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International. Iran generally carries out executions by hanging.