Iran executes fighter Navid Afkari after Trump asked for his life spared

Iran’s state television reports that the country’s authorities have executed a fighter for allegedly murdering a man after President Donald Trump called for the 27-year-old convict’s life to be spared.

State television quoted the Chief Justice of Fars Province Kazem Mousavi as saying on Saturday: “The retaliatory sentence against Navid Afkari, Hassan Turkman’s killer, was carried out this morning at Adelabad Prison in Shiraz. “.

Afkari’s case had drawn the attention of a social media campaign that featured him and his brothers as victims targeted for participating in protests against Iran’s Shiite theocracy in 2018.

Authorities accused Afkari of stabbing an employee of a water supply company in the southern city of Shiraz amid unrest. Iran broadcast the fighter’s televised confession last week.

The segment resembled hundreds of other allegedly coerced confessions that were issued over the past decade in the Islamic Republic.

The case revived a lawsuit within the country for Iran to stop carrying out the death penalty.

Even jailed Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, herself on a hunger strike for nearly a month over conditions in Tehran’s Evin prison amid the coronavirus pandemic, made it known that she supported Afkari.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump tweeted his own concern about the Afkari case.

“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 wrote last week. “Thank you!”

Iran responded to Trump’s tweet with a nearly 11-minute state television package on Afkari. It included the crying parents of the murdered water company employee, Hassan Torkaman.

The package included images of Afkari on the back of a motorcycle, saying that he had stabbed Torkaman in the back, without explaining why he allegedly carried out the assault.

The state television segment showed blurry police documents and described the murder as a “personal dispute,” without elaborating.

He said Afkari’s cell phone had been in the area and showed surveillance footage of him walking down a street, talking on his phone.

Additionally, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency dismissed Trump’s tweet in an article, saying that US sanctions have hit 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.

– AP