Yusef Mehrdad and Seyyed Sadrollah Fazeli Zare had been accused of managing dozens of social media channels and groups “promoting atheism and insulting religious sanctities,” most notably a Telegram channel named "Critique of Superstition and Religion.”
The two were arrested in May 2020, and sentenced to death in April 2021. They were transferred to solitary confinement over the last week in preparation for their execution.
The Iranian judiciary said the verdict was issued following “extensive technical and judicial research,” adding that Mehrdad and Zare had purportedly confessed to committing the insulting acts they were accused of.
In its annual world report on global rights conditions published in January, Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed Iran for conducting unfair trials and obtaining confessions under duress, as well as for charges brought against dual nationals.
“Iranian courts, and particularly revolutionary courts, regularly fall far short of providing fair trials and use confessions likely obtained under torture as evidence in court,” the report read.
Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. A report by the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and France’s Together Against Death Penalty (ECPM) in April said that Tehran had executed at least 582 people in 2022, a 75 percent increase compared to the previous year.
The country executed at least 94 people in January and February this year, according to research from Amnesty International and Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, an Iranian human rights monitor.
