Nearly a year after the execution of Mohammad Hosseini and Mohammad Mehdi Karami in relation to the case of the killing of a member of the Revolutionary Guards Corps Basij force, the brother of the deceased Basij member says that the two individuals who were executed had no connection to the “murder of my brother” and their “crime was enmity against God (Moharebeh).”
Horrific Details of Torture and Execution of Detained Protesters in Iran’s Prisons
A few days after the controversial claims made by the father of Rouhollah Ajamian, a Basij member who was killed in the 2022 protests, who called for the “execution” of all the accused in the case, now his brother is also demanding the execution of Dr. Hamid Gharahassanloo and his wife, two other people who were arrested in the case. Ajamian was killed while Basij members were dispatched to quell protests in Karaj.
Hossein Ajamian said in an interview with the regime’s Etemad newspaper, “The issue is that the person who caused the death of my brother has not been executed.”
Ajamian claimed, “In fact, this man (Dr. Gharahassanloo) is the one who killed my brother. But because he is wealthy and a doctor, he has many connections, and… no one has confronted him.”
The brother of Rouhollah Ajamian said in part of this interview, “In this case, they executed two homeless individuals, but they did not execute the main person, who was a doctor.”
He reiterated his father’s recent statements and said, “Some individuals and influential parties have exploited their positions and changed the course of the case. We only want this person and his wife to be executed in accordance with the law.”
On November 7, Saleh Eskandari, the advisor to Ali Akbar Velayati (the advisor on international affairs to Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime), in response to the criticisms made about his intervention in stopping and changing the death sentence of Dr. Hamid Gharahassanloo, wrote, “The repeated messages from international medical circles calling for intensified sanctions in the medical field and the repeated contacts of medical associations with Velayati” led him to “request further investigation” in a letter to a high-ranking regime official.
Saleh Eskandari emphasized that this action influenced 102 heads of medical organizations throughout the country and a petition signed by more than 6,000 doctors, all advocating for the innocence of Gharahassanloo.
Velayati’s advisor considered the statements made by Rouhollah Ajamian’s father to be based on “misinformation” provided to him by “malicious individuals” and described some of the reactions as a “kind of political settling of accounts with Mr. Velayati.”
On November 1, Mirza Vali Ajamian, the father of Rouhollah Ajamian, criticized Ali Akbar Velayati, the advisor to Ali Khamenei, and blamed him for the individuals in connection with the killing of his son not being executed.
Without presenting evidence, he claimed that “80 individuals were accused in the case, of whom only eight are in custody, and if Velayati turns his head, these eight individuals will also be set free.”
As reported by Iranian media, the father of the Basij member who was killed demanded more executions and, in response to the host’s attempt to “manage the program,” said that on several occasions during his presence at the state broadcaster IRIB, he was told not to say anything about Velayati and that they were afraid of him.
According to the published images of the program, the father of the deceased Basij member stood up from his chair, shouting, “Velayati is the murderer of my child,” and stormed out of the studio.
In March, the Revolutionary Court in Alborz Province issued a new verdict sentencing Hamid Gharahassanloo, the physician arrested in the case of the killed Basij member Rouhollah Ajamian, to 15 years in prison.
Hamid Gharahassanloo and his wife Farzaneh were arrested after the 40th-day commemoration ceremony of the Hadis Najafi in the city of Karaj, western Tehran.
Gharahassanloo, a 53-year-old physician, was one of the five individuals initially sentenced to death for the “killing of a Basij member,” but this sentence was later reduced in subsequent stages.
Like many other people arrested during the protests, these people were subjected to brutal torture and forced to make incriminating confessions. Karami and Hosseini, the two-youth executed in relation to this dossier, were tortured even more brutally than others, according to witnesses.
Last year’s protests in Iran began with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The regime’s morality police arrested her on September 13 for allegedly improperly wearing a hijab, the mandatory head covering imposed upon Iran’s women. Two hours after her arrest, she was taken to a hospital where, three days later, she succumbed to skull injuries that had been sustained during her detention.
The escalation of the widespread protests in 2022, led the regime to order a crackdown on the demonstrations with excessive violence and lethal forces, including live ammunition, which led to the arrests of over 30,000 people and the deaths of over 750.
