Iran set to execute second wrestler amid outcry

Agencies | London

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The Iranian regime is set to execute a second wrestler just months after it hanged champion athlete Navid Afkari amid international pleas for clemency.

Mehdi Ali Hosseini, 29, was arrested in 2015 and charged with murder following a group brawl.

Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper reported that he is expected to be imminently executed because the victim’s family refused to pardon him.

Ali Safavi, an official from the foreign affairs committee of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, said the NCRI and other regime critics “strongly condemn the ruling religious dictatorship for its intention to execute” Hosseini.

“The NCRI is opposed to capital punishment as a matter of principle. As evident in the past four decades, the clerical regime uses executions — political and otherwise — as a means to instil an atmosphere of terror and intimidation in society to thwart the eruption of uprisings by an increasingly enraged and discontented population, which seeks regime change,” Safavi said.

“These executions are carried out in blatant breach of internationally recognised standards, including due process.”

Fellow Iranian wrestler and London 2012 Olympic champion Hamid Sourian has called for Hosseini’s execution to be cancelled.