Iran announced on Sunday that it has hanged two members of the outlawed opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq for convicting them of launching attacks against public and civilian infrastructure.
The official news website of the judiciary, Mizan Online, said on Sunday morning that Behrouz Ehsani Eslamlou and Mehdi Hasani were executed on Sunday morning after being convicted of launching attacks using makeshift mortar launchers against residential areas, schools and government offices.
In January, rights group Amnesty International had issued an appeal for Eslamlou and Hasani, saying the two had been interrogated without the presence of lawyers and had been subjected "to torture and other ill-treatment, including beatings and prolonged solitary confinement, to extract self-incriminating statements.”
The Mojahedin Organization of Iran, also known as the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, issued a statement decrying the executions and said both men had been “subjected to savage torture.”
Calling for international condemnation of the executions, the group said another 14 people have been sentenced to death in Iran for alleged membership in the organization “and are at imminent risk of execution.”
Iranian courts indicted the two men with a range of charges, including waging war against the state, conspiracy, sabotage and membership in a terror group. Prosecutors alleged they conspired to destabilize national stability and harm public property.
The last reported execution of members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq occurred in 2009 after their conviction for their role in an attempted bombing in Tehran's central Enghelab Square.
The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, once a Marxist-Islamist group that opposed Iran’s monarchy, backed the 1979 Islamic Revolution but later broke with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s government. It carried out a series of deadly bombings and assassinations in the 1980s and supported Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war stances that still provoke widespread resentment within Iran. The group is now largely based in Albania but claims to operate a clandestine network inside Iran.
