Iran has executed at least 10 prisoners held on terror charges who belonged to the country's Sunni minority in spite of claims they were subjected to forced confessions and did not have a fair trial.
State news agency IRNA said members of the Tawhid and Jihad group were executed on Tuesday, but did not give a figure. Rights groups said between 10 and 20 people were killed.
They were convicted of killing two Sunni Muslim clerics, several police and wildlife guards, abducting a number of people and carrying out armed robbery and bombings in Western Iran, IRNA said.
Iranian state television broadcast what it said were the confessions of some members of the Sunni Muslim group, in which they said they targeted both Shia and Sunni clerics whose ideologies they regarded as heresy.
Among those executed was Shahram Ahmadi, a 28-year-old Kurdish prisoner, who was convicted for “enmity against God“ because of his alleged membership of so-called Takfiri-Salafist groups, an Iranian term for Sunni jihadi extremists.
In 2009, Ahmadi was arrested in the city of Sanandaj. He was sentenced to death in a trial that lasted only a few minutes, which Amnesty International has described as grossly unfair.
An anonymous member of Ahmadi’s family told the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran they were called on Tuesday morning to visit him in jail for the last time.
“We got on the road, but they called us on our way and told us not to go to prison, and to go to the morgue in Kahrizak instead,” the family member said. “We realised he must have been executed. They called again to say that we should go directly to Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. They had executed him before we arrived. We were only able to get the body.”
Little explanation made available
Iran, which executed nearly 1,000 people last year - more than any other country apart from China - has not provided much explanation about Tuesday‘s executions.
The intelligence ministry issued a statement on Wednesday about what it described as a Takfiri-Salafist group named Monotheism and Jihad whose members it said had been arrested and some sentenced to death.
The ministry’s statement, which was published by the semi-official Isna news agency, said the group had intended to recruit suicide jihadis and had taken arms against the authorities. It was not possible to verify the claims.
Iran's seven million Kurds make up around 10 per cent of the population. Most live in Kurdistan and other northwestern provinces on the border with Iraq. Many Kurds seek greater rights for their region.
The area has seen increased clashes between Kurdish militants and government security forces in recent months.
Increased clashes
Iran’s intelligence ministry said in a statement carried by IRNA that more than 100 members of the Tawhid and Jihad “terrorist” group had been identified, many of whom had been arrested or killed in clashes since 2011.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an independent organisation based in New York, said 20 prisoners had been hanged.
It said Iran’s Supreme Court had rejected the appeal of one of the convicts, Shahram Ahmadi, against his death sentence despite assertions his confession was made under torture.
Human Rights Watch condemned Iran for what it said was the “mass execution of at least 10 prisoners”.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa director, said Iran had executed at least 230 people in 2016.
Iran is one of the world’s top executioners, international rights groups say. Amnesty International said Iran executed at least 977 people in 2015, compared to 320 executions in Pakistan and at least 158 in Saudi Arabia.
Iran rejects international criticism of its rights record as politically motivated.
Iran’s judiciary said the latest cases had been under deliberation for more than six years to make sure all aspects were investigated and the rights of the accused protected.
Agencies