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Tehran Toughens Stance against Protesters, Judiciary Threatens Capital Punishment

Students of the Faculty of Art at the University of Tehran raise papers demanding the release of detainees (Coordinating Committee of Student Unions)
Students of the Faculty of Art at the University of Tehran raise papers demanding the release of detainees (Coordinating Committee of Student Unions)
    London, Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat
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Tehran Toughens Stance against Protesters, Judiciary Threatens Capital Punishment

Students of the Faculty of Art at the University of Tehran raise papers demanding the release of detainees (Coordinating Committee of Student Unions)
Students of the Faculty of Art at the University of Tehran raise papers demanding the release of detainees (Coordinating Committee of Student Unions)

Iranian officials have sharpened their threats against anti-regime protesters with the country's hardliner Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Ejei announcing on Monday his support for delivering the death penalty against demonstrators.

“The deputy head of the judiciary and the public prosecutor are following up on a daily basis the files of key figures in the recent unrest,” Ejei said on the third day of the eighth week of civil disobedience following the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Ejei also vowed to intensify the punishment of those arrested during the protests following a call by the parliament members who have urged the judiciary to issue death sentences for the protesters.

“Whoever carries a firearm or a cold weapon and uses it as an agent of the enemy, threatens the security of the country and raises terror in any region, and at the same time kills a person, retribution (execution) may be carried out against them, and other charges may apply,” said Ejei.

Despite backing calls for serving capital punishment to some protesters, Ejei said that the judiciary will differentiate between demonstrators those who were moved emotionally to participate in the unrest and those who committed crimes and acted on foreign orders.

“The enemies have received a resounding defeat and are trying to carry out harmful actions,” state-run ISNA news agency quoted Ejei as saying.

Later, a court in Tehran convicted three protesters of “war against god.”

The official IRNA news agency stated that the three detainees were brought before the judiciary on charges of sabotaging public funds by setting fire, disrupting public order, assembling, collusion, and carrying out attacks against the regime.

A lawyer for one of the defendants said that his client had burned tires on a highway, which are not considered public money.

Hassan Hassanzadeh, commander of Revolutionary Guards forces in Tehran, threatened to deal with protesters “strictly” on Monday.

He said that the Revolutionary Guards and the police had arrested 14 people they believe are involved in the killing of a prominent member of the Basij forces, west of Tehran.

“The judiciary will deal seriously with those who committed crimes and caused the death of security personnel,” said Hassanzadeh.

“Our security ability to identify and arrest those who stir unrest remains high,” the commander added in an interview with the Revolutionary Guard's affiliated Fars News Agency.

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US Treasury: Chinese Hackers Remotely Accessed Workstations, Documents in 'Major' Cyber Incident

FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
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US Treasury: Chinese Hackers Remotely Accessed Workstations, Documents in 'Major' Cyber Incident

FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Chinese hackers remotely accessed several US Treasury Department workstations and unclassified documents after compromising a third-party software service provider, the agency said Monday.
The department did not provide details on how many workstations had been accessed or what sort of documents the hackers may have obtained, but it said in a letter to lawmakers revealing the breach that “at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.” It said the hack was being investigated as a “major cybersecurity incident,” The Associated Press reported.
“Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” a department spokesperson said in a separate statement. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”
The revelation comes as US officials are continuing to grapple with the fallout of a massive Chinese cyberespionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. A top White House official said Friday that the number of telecommunications companies confirmed to have been affected by the hack has now risen to nine.
The Treasury Department said it learned of the problem on Dec. 8, when a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, flagged that hackers had stolen a key “used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support” to workers. That key helped the hackers override the service's security and gain remote access to several employee workstations.
The compromised service has since been taken offline, and there's no evidence that the hackers still have access to department information, Aditi Hardikar, an assistant Treasury secretary, said in the letter Monday to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee.
The department said it was working with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and others to investigate the impact of the hack, and that the hack had been attributed to Chinese state-sponsored culprits. It did not elaborate.