The US envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, has warned against the execution of two detainees arrested in the protests that have rocked Iran since mid-September.
“Mehdi Mohammadifard and Mohammad Boroughani are 18 and 19 - two of the young Iranians sentenced to death in sham trials. The world is watching. Iran’s leaders should listen to their young people, not kill them,” said Malley in a tweet.
The US envoy’s tweet came after Iran’s Supreme Court sentencing Boroughani to death over charges of setting fire to the governor’s building in Pakdasht and attacking an official on duty with a knife.
Mehdi Mohammadifard, an 18-year-old protester, was sentenced to death on charges of setting alight a traffic police kiosk in the western town of Nowshahr in Mazandaran province, the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group told AFP.
IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told AFP that based on available information, Mohammadifard appeared to be the youngest person yet sentenced to death over the protests.
US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price, in a press briefing, pointed to the fact that the protesting movement in Iran is spontaneous.
“It has crossed ethnic lines, it has crossed geographic lines inside of Iran, and it has in a sense been leaderless. That has allowed these protesters to continue and to persist with their efforts in ways that previous movements in Iran have not been able to,” Price told reporters.
Price moved on to note that the Iran nuclear deal is no longer the focus of Washington.
“It hasn’t been on the agenda for months. It hasn’t been our focus,” he said.
“Since September especially, our focus has been on standing up, as I was telling your colleague, for the fundamental freedoms of the Iranian people and countering Iran’s deepening military partnership with Russia and its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine,” added Price.
