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Iran’s government has handed down jail sentences to at least 400 protestors in Tehran.
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The government has intensified its crackdown on protestors with death sentences and public hangings.
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The UN estimates Iran has arrested at least 14,000 demonstrators since protests began in September.
Iran’s government has sentenced hundreds of protestors to lengthy jail termsin the Iranian capital of Tehran, as death sentences and public hangings have also increased amid the Islamic Republic’s crackdown.
At least 400 people were sentenced to jail in Tehran this week, with sentences ranging from two to ten years in jail, according to The Guardian. Across the country, over 14,000 are expected to have been arrested, according to United Nations estimates last month.
On the Iranian judiciary’s website, the judiciary chief for Tehran Ali Alghasi-Mehr referred to the protestors as “rioters” in describing the dozens of new sentences, per The Guardian.
“One hundred and sixty people were sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison, 80 people to two to five years and 160 people to up to two years,” Alghasi-Mehr said, per The Guardian. On Monday, Iranian professional soccer player Amir Nasr-Azadani was sentenced to death after being arrested and charged with “waging war against God” in connection to the killing of a police officer, according to Iran Wire.
At least 11 death sentences have been handed out related to the protests, and two have been carried out, including against a man who was accused of killing two militia members. He was publicly hanged from a construction crane, according to The Guardian.
Mass protests broke out across Iran following the September death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in police custody. Witnesses accused Iranian security forces of beating Amini into a coma because of the way she wore her headscarf.
Amini’s death has catalyzed a boisterous Iranian protest movement since September, with Iranians protesting women’s rights and social and economic conditions across the country. By the end of November, NGO Iran Human Rights estimated that at least 448 protestors have been killed by Iranian security forces since September, and the Iranian government has said that at least 300 people, including members of the security forces, have died.
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