Iran’s motives are clear in putting Navid Afkari to death

In the days before Iran put to death former champion Greco-Roman wrestler Navid Afkari on dubious murder charges in connection with the death of a government employee in 2018 protests, his family and many supporters inside and outside the country held out hope for some kind of leniency. 

After all, the 27-year-old had captured the attention of the international community, with both Donald Trump and a major international sports union calling for some kind of reprieve.

Nevertheless, on Saturday morning, Afkari was taken from his cell at a high-security wing of a prison in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz and put to death. His family is devastated. Both of his brothers were also arrested for the crime of killing Hassan Torkaman – variously described as an intelligence officer or a water company official – in an August 2018 demonstration and forced to testify against their sibling.

Afkari’s convictions in both Iran’s criminal and “revolutionary” courts were based on confessions that he has later recanted and said were extracted under physical and psychological torture – accusations Iran has sought to deny. According to human rights monitors, there is evidence that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted.

“If I am executed, I want you to know that an innocent person, even though he tried and fought with all his strength to be heard, was executed,” Afkari pleaded in a recording smuggled out of prison and released by activists.

In apparent violation of Iranian law, neither Afkari’s family nor his lawyer were informed that he was about to be put to death. They had no chance to say goodbye, and one can imagine the anguish the young man must have felt as he was hustled by prison guards into the courtyard where a noose was put around his neck.

His funeral was held in a nighttime ceremony overseen by the regime’s plainclothes security enforcers. Social media users shared video footage showing his mother weeping in despair; her two other sons have been sentenced to a total of 81 years in prison.

The execution stirred outrage worldwide, as Iran must have known it would have. “Iran’s cruel execution of Navid Afkari is a travesty,” presidential contender Joe Biden wrote on Twitter. “No country should arrest, torture, or execute peaceful protestors or activists.”

Mixed Martial Arts champion Bobby Green cut off a live interview after learning of Afkari’s death. “I thought we were going to be able to save him,” he said. “He just lost his life. That just messed me up. Somebody just lost his life for protesting. That’s just so sad. It’s messed up.”

According to Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, Afkari’s fate showed “that Iran’s judiciary is a tool of political repression and violence—and it is a threat to the Iranian people.”

But contrary to popular belief, Iran’s theocratic autocracy is quite messy, and it’s very possible the judiciary in Shiraz went ahead with the hanging without the explicit blessing of higher court authorities 575 miles away in Tehran, or the pragmatist government of President Hassan Rouhani.

But senior judiciary officials, the presidency or especially the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could have intervened in the case in any number of ways at any point. And they didn’t.

One reason may have been the widespread perception that a social media campaign earlier this year halted the execution of three young men. After Iran stayed the death penalty for the three, Twitter warriors abroad patted themselves on the back for saving their lives. By allowing Afkari’s hanging to go forward, Iran sends the message to its domestic and international opponents that none of their efforts at peaceful protest or hashtag campaigns will augur change.

Tehran is terrified of the prospect of peaceful protests erupting in the wake of the government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, the worst in the Middle East, as well as the concomitant economic crisis, with the value of the Iranian rial collapsing to record lows.

Iran’s regime enforcers want to terrify potential protesters into staying home, and the cruelty they have shown Afkari and his family is the point. If they could blithely hang a well-known guy like Afkari, imagine what they’d do to an ordinary student or labourer caught up in the protests?

“His lawful participation in the protests that swept Iran in 2018 effectively signed his death warrant,” said Ghaemi. “The authorities are determined to stamp out any peaceful dissent and protest and are increasingly issuing death sentences to enforce this repression.”

The regime’s stratagem just may work. Who wants to risk their life just to take part in a protest? But as the lives of Iranians get more and more miserable, calculations may change, and the people could decide they have little to lose by taking to the streets against a despotic system that fails to deliver.