Iran’s court announced on Saturday that it has put to death six members of a “terrorist” organization found guilty of carrying out armed assaults in the Khuzestan region in the country’s southwest.
“The death sentence for six separatist terrorist elements, who in recent years had carried out a series of armed operations and bombings targeting security in Khuzestan province, was carried out at dawn today,” the judiciary said on its Mizan website.
The identities of those executed and details of their arrests and sentencing were not immediately clear.
But Mizan reported that they were involved in the killings of four security personnel, including two police officers and two members of the Basij paramilitary force, in 2018 and 2019.
The report also said they had “confessed to planning and executing acts of sabotage such as making and planting bombs, blowing up the Khorramshahr gas station”.
Iran usually links what it calls separatist and terrorist groups to its arch-nemesis, Israel, which it calls the “Zionist regime”.
In a separate execution on Saturday, authorities hanged Saman Mohammadi after convicting him for “Moharebeh” — waging war against God — for his alleged membership in terrorist and Takfiri groups, Tehran’s term for Islamist militants.
Arrested in 2013, Mohammadi was allegedly involved in armed robberies, kidnappings, including the murder of a conscript, and the 2009 murder of the Friday prayers imam in the western city of Sanandaj.
Less than a week had passed since Iran claimed to have executed a man it identified as one of Israel’s best spies.
Human rights organizations like Amnesty International claim that the Islamic republic, which executes people by hanging, is the second most common executioner in the world, after China.
