BEIRUT (AP) — Iran publicly hanged two men on Tuesday who were convicted of killing four police officers during nationwide anti-government protests in January, state media reported.The protests were some of the largest ever held against the Islamic Republic, which responded with a brutal crackdown in which thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands arrested. The protests had been largely stamped out when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran on Feb. 28.Rights groups said the execution of Abdolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amir Hossein Safari Hosseinabadi was carried out at dawn in Alikhani Square in the central city of Isfahan, the place where the police were killed.They were among 14 people accused of killing the police, all of them sentenced to death. Two were executed earlier this month.Public executions are not uncommon in Iran, and are often reserved for political prisoners. They are largely carried out by hanging in a public square, where cranes mounted on trucks serve as gallows.
A wave of executions since JanuaryAt least five protesters, including the two on Tuesday, have been hanged in public since March, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, HRANA, which monitors human rights in Iran. The group says it has documented 29 public executions in the past five years. Amnesty International called Tuesday’s executions “a further escalation in the authorities’ use of the death penalty to crush dissent.” It said at least 60 others, including three arrested as children, remain at risk of execution.
