Babak Paknia, the lawyer representing Mohammad Javad Vafai Thani, announced that despite “numerous flaws,” his client’s death sentence was confirmed by Branch 9 of the Supreme Court.
Vafai Thani was sentenced to death on charges of “corruption on earth through arson and destruction of public property.”
On Saturday, October 4, Paknia posted on X that he had corresponded with Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, regarding “procedural flaws and interference by third parties” in Vafai Thani’s case.
He added, “I hope before it’s too late, his special inspectors will intervene in the matter.”
The death sentence of the 29-year-old boxer had previously been overturned several times by the Supreme Court.
89 People Convicted for Participating in Iran’s November 2019 Protests
In June 2024, Paknia reported that Branch 9 of the Supreme Court had “not deemed the original verdict as definitive” and, while opposing the death sentence, had referred Vafai Thani’s case to another branch for retrial.
Security forces arrested Vafai Thani in April 2020 in Mashhad following the bloody November 2019 protests and transferred him to Vakilabad Prison.
About two years later, in January 2021, Vafai Thani was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court in Mashhad.
The initial death verdict was overturned by the Supreme Court after appeal, and the case was referred to a parallel branch for reconsideration.
In early November 2023, Branch 2 of the Mashhad Revolutionary Court again sentenced the protesting athlete to death, but this ruling was overturned for the second time by the Supreme Court on June 7, 2024.
Earlier, human rights sources reported that since his arrest, Vafai Thani had been subjected to torture to extract forced confessions.
The 2019 protests began on November 15, 2019, in response to a sudden hike in gasoline prices but quickly took on an anti-regime nature. Within a week, demonstrations against Iran’s regime spread across 29 provinces and hundreds of cities.
At the time, some sources reported that about 1,500 people were killed during the regime’s crackdown on the protests.
Security forces also arrested at least 8,600 people across different provinces.
During the unfair judicial proceedings of the Iranian regime, some detainees were sentenced to long prison terms without access to a lawyer of their choice.
Some detained protesters, including Vafai Thani, were sentenced to death without any credible evidence or proof recognized even by the regime’s own judicial authorities.
