Iran on Saturday, 12th September, 2020, despite global public outcry, executed Navid Afkari, a young wrestler accused of voluntary homicide.
The wrestler was said to have been executed in the morning at a prison in the southern city of Shiraz, provincial prosecutor general Kazem Mousavi was quoted as saying on state television’s website.
Afkari is understood to have killed Hossein Torkman, a public sector worker during anti-government protests in August 2018 by stabbing him to death.
Before the 27-year-old wrestler was killed, some reports noted that Afkari was condemned on the basis of confessions extracted under torture, a claim denied by the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency.
The sentence had been carried out at “the insistence of the victim’s family”, said Mousavi, the prosecutor general for Fars province as quoted by AFP.
Afkari’s lawyer, Hassan Younessi, said on Twitter that a number of people in Shiraz were to meet with the slain worker’s family on Sunday to ask for their forgiveness.
He also said that based on criminal law in Iran “the convict has a right to meet his family before the execution.”
“Were you in such a hurry to carry out the sentence that you deprived Navid of his last visit?”
Prominent among those who had called on Iran not to execute the wrestler is US President, Donald Trump who wrote on Twitter that “To the leaders of Iran, I would greatly appreciate if you would spare this young man’s life, and not execute him. Thank you!”
