A Kurd has been hanged in Iran. He is said to have killed a police officer in 2018. However, there are doubts about his confession.
A Kurdish activist accused of killing a police officer has been executed in Iran. “Arasch Ahmadi, also known as Sarkot, a member of the Komala terrorist group, was executed this morning,” state television reported on Wednesday. Human rights groups described the 29-year-old Ahmadi as a political prisoner.
Police officer Hassan Maleki was murdered in August 2018 in Ravansar, a city in western Iran’s Kermanshah province. State television showed videos of Ahmadi’s alleged confession in its report. Such videos are common in Iran and have been consistently condemned by human rights groups because they are often coerced and the result of torture. Read more about it here.
Family not informed of execution in advance
According to human rights groups based abroad, Ahmadi was arrested in early 2021 while trying to flee to Europe following his murder conviction. He had always denied the allegations.
On Wednesday morning, Ahmadi was hanged in a prison in the city of Kermanshah, Iran Human Rights (IHR) and the organization Hengaw, both based in Norway, and the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network said in separate statements. The execution was carried out without informing his family in advance.
Iran is one of the countries with the most executed death sentences
Komala is a political party fighting for the autonomy of Kurdish-populated regions. It has been banned as a terrorist group since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The western Iranian provinces of Kurdistan, Kermashah and West Azerbaijan, which have a large Kurdish population, have been the scene of fighting between Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.
According to the human rights group Amnesty International, Iran is the country with the highest number of executed death sentences after China.
