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Iranian fighter Navid Afkari has been executed after being found guilty of stabbing to death a security guard, according to state media.
“The retaliatory sentence against Navid Afkari, Hassan Turkman’s killer, was carried out this morning at Adelabad Prison in Shiraz,” Fars Province Chief Justice Kazem Mousavi quoted on state television on Saturday. .
Authorities had accused the 27-year-old Afkari of stabbing the employee of the water supply company in the southern city of Shiraz. Iran broadcast the fighter’s televised confession last week.
But Afkari said he was tortured into making a false confession, according to his family and activists. His lawyer said there was no proof of his guilt. Iran’s judiciary, however, denied the torture allegations.
Afkari and his brothers worked as construction workers in Shiraz, 680 km (420 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.
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The Shiraz provincial court also sentenced Afkari’s brothers, Vahid Afkari and Habib Afkari, to 54 and 27 years in prison, respectively, for the murder.
Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig, reporting from Tehran, said there is two different narratives about the murder.
“Outside of Iran, we heard that Navid Afkari was arrested because of these protests that took place in 2018 and the alleged murder of a security officer. Inside Iran, it is very different. The judiciary issued a statement a while ago: They said that Navid Afkari was arrested after the murder of a 52-year-old water worker accompanying the Shiraz water company, and that murder took place on July 23, 2018.
“Navid Afkari was arrested by the police a few days later, after they identified him using CCTV footage. As far as the judiciary is concerned, his arrest and conviction have nothing to do with the protests that took place,” Baig said.
Trump’s appeal
Afkari’s sentencing had sparked a social media campaign featuring him and his siblings as targeted victims for participating in the 2018 protests. On Tuesday, a global union representing 85,000 athletes had called for Iran’s expulsion from the sport. world if he executed Afkari.
US President Donald Trump also voiced his own concerns.
“To the leaders of Iran, I would greatly appreciate it if you would spare the life of this young man and not execute him,” Trump tweeted earlier this month. “Thank you!”
Iran responded to Trump’s tweet with an 11-minute state television broadcast on Afkari, which featured Turkman’s tearful parents.
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The broadcast included footage of Afkari on a motorcycle, saying he stabbed Turkman in the back, without explaining why he allegedly carried out the assault.
The state television segment also showed blurry police documents and described the murder as a “personal dispute,” without elaborating.
He said Afkari’s mobile phone had been in the area and showed surveillance footage of him walking down a street, talking on his phone.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency dismissed Trump’s tweet in an article, saying that US sanctions have hurt Iranian hospitals amid the pandemic.
“Trump is concerned about the life of a murderer while endangering the lives of many Iranian patients by imposing severe penalties,” the agency said.
Baig pointed state TV has published an interview with Hassan Turkman’s parents, in which they said that their son was murdered and that they had the right to retaliation.
They added that “the foreign media hadn’t even bothered to talk to them when they killed their son, and that they left three children behind. So there are two very different narratives,” Baig said.
