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Authorities in Iran on Monday executed a Jewish man, Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani, who had been sentenced to death for murder, Iranian media reported.
“The sentence of retribution was executed this morning,” said Hamidreza Karimi, the prosecutor for Kermanshah in western Iran, according to the Mehr news agency.
According to one version of events, in November 2022, seven men, including Amir Shokri, a non-Jewish man who owed money to Ghahremani, then 18, ambushed him at a gym. Shokri pulled a knife on Ghahremani and an altercation ensued, resulting in Shokri’s death.
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Karimi offered a different account. He told Mehr that, “According to the eyewitness, no one else was present at the scene of the murder except for Arvin Ghahremani and the victim.”
Under Iranian law, relatives of murder victims may choose to accept a cash settlement and spare the killer’s life. Shokri’s family declined the cash offer and insisted on the sentence being carried out, Mehr reported.
Ghahremani’s family had said during his trial that “key errors in the case were intentionally ignored” and that his actions to save the victim were not taken into account, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR).
The man’s relatives also said that Ghahremani was not adequately represented by his defence lawyer.
Ghahremani’s execution had been set for May, but he received a last-minute stay of execution.
The Islamic Republic executed 853 people in 2023 — the most since 2015, London-based Amnesty International said last month.
Earlier this year, Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, expressed concerns that Ghahremani was not receiving a fair trial because he was Jewish.
“We note with concern that Iranian authorities often subject Jewish citizens to different standards when it comes to determining judgments in cases of this nature,” she said.
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