According to IRNA, around 20 Sunni Kurds in Iran were executed. They were accused of terrorism and were members of “Tawhid and Jihad” Takfiri terroristic group. Extremists were suspected of security forces. As lawyers said, accused people were forced to write the confession. State agency IRNA told, that terrorists were executed on Tuesday, but did not mention the amount of executed. Rights groups estimations told about 10 to 30 people were executed.
Executed were convicted of killing two Sunni Muslim clerics, several police, and wildlife guards, abducting a number of people and carrying out armed robbery and bombings in Western Iran. Iranian state television broadcast stated that the confessions of some members of the Sunni group, in which they said they targeted both Shiite and Sunni clerics whose ideologies they regarded as heresy.
There are almost seven million of Kurds in Iran, which is almost 10% of the whole population of Iran. Most of them are live in Kurdistan and in the borders with Iraq and Turkey. Last year, the number of clashes and armed riots increased in the region.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said that more than 100 members of the Tawhid and Jihad “terrorist” group had been identified, many of whom had been arrested or killed in clashes since 2011.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an independent organization based in New York, said 20 prisoners had been hanged. It said Iran’s Supreme Court had rejected the appeal of one of the convicts, Shahram Ahmadi, against his death sentence despite assertions his confession was made under torture.
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