Symbolic imageIran's judiciary has hanged two men it convicted over the deaths of police officers during January's protests in Isfahan, carrying the crackdown on those demonstrations into the execution chamber. Crowds gathered at the site of the hangings, and security forces dispersed them. The case marks the point where the state's response to the Isfahan unrest moved from arrests and trials to capital punishment. Inside the prison system, the pressure is running the other way. At Ghezel Hesar prison near Tehran, at least 1,500 prisoners on death row are refusing food, and some have sewn their lips shut, an act of protest aimed at the pace of executions. Rights groups count at least 424 executions in Iran so far this year, a tally that places the two Isfahan hangings inside a much wider pattern rather than apart from it. What happens next turns on whether the judiciary presses ahead with further protest-related death sentences and how it answers the hunger strike.
Protests broke out in Isfahan in January, and police officers died during them. Iran's judiciary tried and convicted men over those deaths, and has now begun executing them. Separately, Iran carries out executions at a high volume across ordinary criminal cases as well: rights groups put the count at at least 424 this year. Ghezel Hesar prison near Tehran holds a large death row population, and prisoners there have turned to hunger strikes as their main available form of protest. The two strands, protest prosecutions and the broader execution rate, are now feeding the same confrontation between the judiciary and prisoners.
Iran's judiciary hanged two men convicted over the deaths of police officers during January's protests in Isfahan, after crowds gathered at the site and were dispersed by security forces. At Ghezel Hesar prison near Tehran, at least 1,500 death row prisoners are on hunger strike, one having his lips sewn shut. Rights groups count at least 424 executions in Iran this year.