Iran broadcast on Saturday night the television of the confession of an Iranian fighter facing the death penalty after the US President called for the young man’s life to be spared.
The images resemble “hundreds of other presumed forced confessions” broadcast on Iranian state television “in the past decade,” according to the American agency Associated Press.
Navid Afkari, 27, introduced as a young fighter, was found guilty of “voluntary murder” of an employee of the public water company in Shiraz, in the south, stabbed on August 2, 2018.
The case is the subject of a campaign on social media, which portrays Navid and his brothers Vahid and Habib, sentenced to 54 and 27 years in prison respectively, as victims chosen due to their participation in protests against the Iranian government.
“I heard that Iran is preparing to execute a major fighting star, Navid Afkari, 27, who only participated in an anti-government demonstration,” wrote President Donald Trump on Twitter on Friday.
“To the attention of Iranian leaders. I would really appreciate it if you spared this young man’s life and didn’t execute him. Thank you! ”He said.
On the same day, the semi-official news agency Tasnim rejected the message from the President of the United States.
“Trump is concerned about the life of a murderer while putting the lives of many Iranian patients at risk by imposing severe sanctions,” which also affect hospitals, he said.
Washington reinstated harsh economic sanctions on Iran after abandoning Tehran’s nuclear deal with the major powers in 2015 in mid-2018.
The images broadcast on state television on Saturday show the mortal victim’s tearful parents and Navid Afkari sitting on a motorcycle saying he stabbed Hassam Torkaman in the back, without explaining why he had committed the attack.
A recent United Nations report mentions “a widespread pattern of officials who use torture to obtain false confessions” from those protesting against the Government in the Islamic Republic.
The speed with which Iran broadcast Afkari’s confession on television may indicate that it intends to execute him, according to the AP, which added that Trump wrote on Twitter earlier this year about three other men who should be executed and who later got a retrial.
With at least 251 executions in 2019, Iran is, after China, the country that most appeals to capital punishment, according to the latest world report on the death penalty published by Amnesty International.
–
