IRANIAN authorities have executed a wrestler convicted of murder after US president Donald Trump had asked for his life to be spared.
Twenty-seven-year-old Navid Afkari’s case had drawn the attention of a social media campaign that portrayed him and his brothers as victims, targeted over participating in protests against Iran’s Shia theocracy in 2018.
Authorities accused Afkari of stabbing a water supply company employee in the southern city of Shiraz amid the unrest.
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State TV quoted a top justice official as saying: “The retaliation sentence against Navid Afkari, the killer of Hassan Turkman, was carried out this morning in Adelabad prison in Shiraz.”
Iran broadcast the wrestler’s televised confession last week. The segment resembled hundreds of other suspected coerced confessions aired over the last decade in the Islamic Republic.
The case revived a demand inside the country for Iran to stop carrying out the death penalty.
Imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, herself nearly a month into a hunger strike over conditions at Tehran’s Evin prison amid the coronavirus pandemic, passed word that she supported Afkari.
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Earlier, Trump tweeted out his own concern about Afkari’s case: “To the leaders of Iran, I would greatly appreciate if you would spare this young man’s life, and not execute him. Thank you!”
Iran responded to Trump’s tweet with a near 11-minute state TV package on Afkari. It included the weeping parents of the murdered water company employee.
The package included footage of Afkari on the back of a motorbike, saying he had stabbed his victim in the back, without explaining why he allegedly carried out the assault.
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