Milad Panahipour, an attorney, announced that his client, 42-year-old laborer and political prisoner Manouchehr Fallah from Gilan Province, currently held in Lakan Prison in Rasht, has been sentenced to death on the charge of “destruction with intent to confront the government.” According to the lawyer, the charge is based on the explosion of a small firecracker outside the Gilan courthouse.
On Thursday, October 23, Panahipour told the state-run news website Emtedad that Fallah lost his father in childhood and that the incident leading to his death sentence caused only about 150 million rials (approximately $130) in damages. Despite this, the court issued a death sentence.
The lawyer explained that since childhood, after his father’s death, Fallah had made a living as a laborer and constantly struggled with poverty and hardship. During more than two and a half years of imprisonment, he was allowed only a few visits and, due to his mental state, preferred not to see his young daughter in the prison environment.
Referring to his client’s mental and economic condition, Panahipour said issuing such a sentence for a man who neither possessed a weapon nor harmed anyone represents “the height of injustice.”
The only basis used by the Revolutionary Court judge to accuse him of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) was the minor financial damage to the door and façade of the Rasht courthouse.
Lawyers argue that the ruling is riddled with flaws and that the case file lacks any evidence that could justify charging Fallah with moharebeh or issuing a death sentence.
The Basis for the Death Sentence
Panahipour explained that the cited legal article concerns the destruction of vital public facilities; however, in Fallah’s case, no such facilities were damaged, no one was injured, and no public service was disrupted—the only damage was a minor dent in a metal door.
He stressed that the case involved merely the explosion of a very small sound firecracker at midnight with no bystanders present, yet the court wrongly interpreted Article 687 of Iran’s Penal Code as “destruction of vital facilities.”
The lawyer added that the Gilan courthouse operated normally the very next day, with no disruption of services or harm to citizens, asking: “So what destruction or confrontation with the government are they talking about? Is this what justice demands?”
According to him, despite legal and technical flaws, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, and his client, after more than two and a half years in prison, is now on the verge of execution. During his last visit, Fallah said, “My life is for the people of Iran.”
Panahipour called the ruling a clear violation of the principle of proportionality between crime and punishment.
Arrest and Sentencing
Fallah was arrested in July 2023 by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence at Rasht Airport and charged with “propaganda against the regime,” “insulting Ali Khamenei, the regime’s supreme leader,” “membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK),” “destruction of public property,” and “manufacturing and using a homemade sound bomb.”
In November 2023, this political prisoner was sentenced by Branch 3 of the Rasht Revolutionary Court to one year, three months, and one day in prison for “insulting Khamenei,” and seven months and 16 days for “propaganda against the regime.”
After he accepted the verdict, one-quarter of his sentence was reduced, and his prison term for that case ended in May 2024.
In another case, on December 11, 2024, he was tried via video conference at the Rasht Revolutionary Court presided over by Judge Mohammad Ali Darvish-Goftar and, in February 2025, was sentenced to death by hanging on the charge of moharebeh (“enmity against God”).
In February 2025, Fallah wrote a letter to his daughter Asal on her 16th birthday anniversary: “On the eve of your birthday, Judge Mohammad Ali Darvish-Goftar delivered my death sentence, perhaps thinking it would make me surrender. But he is unaware that the path I have chosen was not learned from books, but from life itself and from the suffering of the people.”
Currently, in addition to prisoners convicted of common crimes who are executed daily in Iran’s prisons, about 70 political prisoners nationwide face the risk of their death sentences being confirmed or carried out, while more than 100 others face the possibility of new death sentences on similar charges.
