Alireza Sepahi, 25, was hanged at dawn on Monday, October 5, in Isfahan, Iran, hours after marrying his 22-year-old fiancée, Mahshad Kashani, in a telephone wedding ceremony conducted from their separate prisons. A co-defendant, 21-year-old Alireza Raeisi, was executed alongside him, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights and the rights group HRANA.
A wedding hours before the gallows
According to a report in The Sunday Times, recounted by the Tehran-based human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi, the couple decided on an informal wedding on Sunday, October 4, after Sepahi's relatives were summoned for what prisoners know as the final visit. Davoudi recited the vows over an audio call with both men's and women's fathers giving permission; the bride's dowry was a copy of the Quran, a piece of rock candy and a single red rose. Prison authorities refused the couple's request to meet in person. "It was Mahshad's idea," Davoudi told the newspaper, adding that even some prison officers were moved to tears by the scene. Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying: "He became a groom yesterday, and today they executed him."
The case behind the death sentence
Sepahi was arrested on January 10, days after demonstrations at Isfahan's Alikhani Square on January 8 that peaked across Iran, and was among 12 defendants accused in connection with the deaths of four security personnel, Iranian authorities said. The judiciary's Mizan agency reported that Sepahi and Raeisi were convicted of membership of an armed group and endangering national security. Iran Human Rights says seven of the 12 defendants, including Sepahi's cousin Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani, have now been executed, bringing the total number of people executed in connection with the protests to 34.
Rights groups dispute the fairness of the proceedings. The US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, cited by AFP, described the case as marred by serious procedural flaws, saying defence evidence — including footage the defence says showed Sepahi was not present at the incident — was disregarded. HRANA reported that after Iran's Supreme Court approved a retrial, a parallel branch of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court rejected the request without a hearing and sent the file to the sentence-enforcement department. Separately, Sepahi had survived a scheduled public execution in July after suffering a heart attack on the way to the gallows; he was hospitalised and later returned to prison, where UN Special Rapporteur Mai Sato said he lived every day in fear of execution.
Reactions on both sides
Human rights organisations and opposition figures condemned the hanging. Davoudi accused the authorities of "taking revenge on innocent young people," and Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran wrote to UN Secretary-General António Guterres urging international action ahead of the October 10 World Day Against the Death Penalty, according to Fox News. The family was reportedly denied Sepahi's body for burial in Isfahan; it was instead transferred to Kashan, about 200 km away, according to Iran International.
Iranian authorities have not publicly responded to the latest condemnation. The judiciary's stated position, through Mizan, remains that the men were lawfully convicted of membership of an armed group and endangering national security in connection with the January 8 unrest in which officers were killed.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Hitman (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
The execution has become a focal point in the broader dispute over Iran's crackdown on the January protests — a dispute that turns on whether the January 8 unrest and its aftermath constituted an armed threat to national security or a protest movement met with excessive force. The answer remains contested, and with more than a hundred death sentences reported in connection with the protests, the cases of those still on death row will keep that question in the spotlight.
Sources: Fox News, Times Now, The Jerusalem Post, HRANA