Iran on Monday executed a member of the country’s Jewish minority who had been convicted of murder, an NGO said, at a time of rising tensions with Israel.
Arvin Ghahremani was hanged in prison in the western city of Kermanshah after being found guilty of a murder during a street fight, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group.
“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jewish citizen,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding the legal case had “significant flaws”.
“However, in addition to this, Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalised anti-Semitism in the Islamic republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the execution of his sentence,” Amiry-Moghaddam added.
IHR said that Ghahremani was accused of killing a man during a street fight in Kermanshah two years ago. But it said that, according to his family, he had been attacked with a knife and defended himself using the attacker’s weapon.
Ghahremani’s mother, Sonia Saadati, had asked for his life to be spared.
His family urged the victim’s relatives to accept blood money under Iran’s Islamic law of retribution (qesas), which permits this alternative.
According to IHR, Iran is seeing a surge in executions, with at least 654 people hanged this year including 166 in October alone.
– Retrial requests rejected –
The Mizan Online website of the Iranian judiciary confirmed Ghahremani’s execution, saying the victim’s family had “refused to give consent” to such a deal.
Mizan, which did not refer to Ghahremani’s Jewish faith in its report, said the incident took place in November 2022 due to a financial disagreement. Ghahremani stabbed the victim to death with a knife.
The defendant’s lawyers requested a retrial three times, but each request was rejected, it added.
Mizan said that Ghahremani was 21 at the time of the fight. However IHR said he was 18 then, with other reports saying he was 20 or 21 by the time of his execution.
The US-based Human Rights Activists news agency (HRANA) also confirmed the execution and the Jewish faith of Ghahremani, who was also known as Nathaniel.
The once sizeable Jewish community in Shiite Muslim-dominated Iran has dwindled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution but remains the largest in the Middle East outside Israel.
While Jewish Iranians were executed in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, there has been no execution of any Jewish Iranians in recent years.
Iran and Israel have traded unprecedented air attacks this year following the outbreak of Israel’s wars with armed groups backed by the Islamic republic in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Following Iran’s October 1 salvo of missiles against Israel — intended as a reprisal to Israeli strikes that killed senior figures in Iran-backed groups Hezbollah and Hamas — Israel on October 26 attacked Iranian air defences and oil production facilities.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowed new retaliation for attacks by Israel, saying “the enemies, both the USA and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response.”
Estimates in recent years have often put the numbers of Jews remaining Iran as 20,000 but the latest report on religious freedom of the US state department cited the Tehran Jewish Committee as saying the population was now as small as 9,000.
The Islamic republic does not recognise Israel and Israeli flags are regularly burned and the slogan “death to Israel” chanted in street demonstrations.
However the authorities reject charges of anti-Semitism, saying Iran’s Jewish community is a recognised minority in the constitution with freedom of worship and an MP to represent their interests in parliament.