Iran: Protester’s father sentenced to 6 years in prison

Iranian courts have sentenced the father of a teenager who was executed last year to six years in prison in a case linked to the 2022 protests and led a campaign to save his son’s life, his lawyer said on Saturday.

Mashallah Karami was convicted by a revolutionary court in the city of Karaj near Tehran for illegally organizing rallies and collecting donations, his lawyer Ali Sharifzadeh Artaghani wrote in X, adding that he would appeal.

His son, Mohammad Mehdi Karami, was executed in January 2023 after being convicted in November 2022 of the November 2022 killing of a member of the Basij militia group linked to Iran’s ideological force, the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran has been rocked by the death in custody of Mahza Amini, a young woman arrested for defying the Islamic republic’s strict dress code.

Mashalla Karami posted videos on social media calling for her son’s life to be saved, and after his death, she posted pictures of his grave and the young man’s relatives in mourning.

He was arrested in August 2023.

Amnesty International said this week that at least eight people face the death penalty in cases related to the protests, saying authorities “flagrantly violated their right to a fair trial and subjected many of them to torture and other ill-treatment.

According to the NGO, Mohammad Mehdi Karami and eight others executed in cases related to the demonstrations were hanged after “show trials”.

Human rights defenders have repeatedly accused authorities of persecuting relatives of those killed during the crackdown on the 2022 protests, and of those later executed, to prevent them from speaking publicly about the cases.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said Mashallah Karami’s sentence was a “blatant example of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ruthless repression against families seeking justice”.