Iran executes six over alleged Israel-backed attack

 

Iran executed six men on Saturday (Oct. 4), who were accused of carrying out deadly attacks in the country's southwest on behalf of Israel, state media reported.

The executions come amid serious allegations of torture and coerced confessions from human rights groups.

The men were allegedly involved in a series of bombings and assaults on police and security forces in Khorramshahr, a city in the oil-rich Khuzestan province.

State television aired footage of one man detailing the attacks, claiming the confession was being made public for the first time.

However, the Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw disputes the official narrative.

They contend the six men were actually Arab political prisoners arrested during the 2019 anti-government protests.

Hengaw alleges that Iranian authorities linked them to the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), a separatist group accused of pipeline bombings.

The rights group claims the men were severely tortured and forced into televised 'confessions' under duress.

The executions follow weeks after a 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June. The conflict reportedly ended with a ceasefire agreement after U.S. military strikes, credited by then-Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth to President Trump, allegedly "obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities."

Following the war, Tehran warned it would retaliate against its "enemies at home and abroad."

In a separate incident on the same day, a man convicted of murder and other crimes, including the killing of a Sunni cleric in 2009, was hanged in Kurdistan province.

The pace of executions in Iran this year has drawn widespread international alarm. Amnesty International has reported that Iran has executed over 1,000 people so far this year, the highest figure recorded by the organization in at least 15 years.

This rapid pace has been compared to the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Independent United Nations experts have strongly criticized Tehran's actions.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights described the surge as a "dramatic escalation that violates international human rights law," noting that with "an average of more than nine hangings per day in recent weeks, Iran appears to be conducting executions at an industrial scale."

The UN body has urged Iran to immediately halt the wave of hangings and adhere to basic standards of justice.