Iran’s regime executed a Kurdish political prisoner Reza Rasaei on the morning of August 6, 2024, in Dizelabad prison in Kermanshah. Rasai was arrested during the 2022 anti-regime uprising. The regime’s security forces tortured him in Kermanshah’s Dizelabad prison and forced to make incriminating confessions about killing a member of the Revolutionary Guards in November 2022.
His death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in December 2023. In May 2024, Amnesty International issued an open letter to Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of the judiciary of the Iranian regime, calling for the revocation of the verdict.
In recent weeks, authorities at Dizelabad Prison cut off his access to phone calls and in-person visits with his family. According to reports, the regime prevented his family from having a final meeting with him before his execution.
Rasai was 34 years old at the time of his execution. The Iranian Resistance had repeatedly called for urgent international intervention to save Reza’s life, including on April 27, 2024. He was the 10th person to be executed in relation to the 2022 uprising.
All other executed protesters were subjected to similarly flawed judicial processes, extreme torture, and conditions that forced them to make incriminating confessions. The verdicts were carried out despite global outcries by human rights organizations to revoke them.
In September 2022, nationwide protests erupted in Iran after security forces murdered a young woman for violating the regime’s misogynistic hijab rules. Protesters expressed decades of pent-up anger during the protests and called for the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime.
During the uprising, regime security forces killed more than 750 civilians and arrested tens of thousands. Dozens were sentenced to death. Prisoners were brutally tortured and mistreated and several prisoners committed suicide after their release due to the stress caused by the torture and reports that regime authorities injected them with drugs that caused severe depression.
Death Penalty and Repression Are Central to the Regime’s Survival
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), condemned the execution of political prisoner Reza Rasaei by the Iranian regime. Mrs. Rajavi called for international action to hold the regime accountable for its human rights abuses and to prevent further executions of political prisoners.
She said: “Khamenei has once again committed a heinous act by shedding the blood of the courageous detained protester, Reza Rasaei. This is yet another chapter in the extensive record of Khamenei’s tyranny and crimes.
The execution of this political prisoner in the early days of the clerical regime’s new president underscores that execution and repression are central to the regime’s survival. As long as Khamenei and the Velayat-e Faqih regime remain in power, these practices will persist.
With deepest sympathy to Reza’s family, friends, and fellow citizens, these atrocities will undoubtedly galvanize the heroic people, rebellious youth, and Resistance Units to intensify their efforts to uproot religious tyranny and establish democracy, popular sovereignty, and justice.”
Khamenei has once again committed a heinous act by shedding the blood of the courageous detained protester, #RezaRasaei. This is yet another chapter in the extensive record of Khamenei's tyranny and crimes.
The execution of this political prisoner in the early days of the… pic.twitter.com/Lv4U5Oywls— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) August 6, 2024
