Iran executes Jewish man whose family had sought to avert death sentence
The nonprofit Iran Human Rights said antisemitism had factored into Arvin Ghahremani’s case
Arvin Ghahreman Courtesy of Iranian Human Rights
(JTA) — Iran has executed a 20-year-old Jewish man who killed a man in a 2022 fight after the victim’s family refused to negotiate an alternative punishment.
Arvin Ghahremani, 20, had been scheduled to be executed in May but received a stay after Jewish and human rights groups around the world called attention to his case.
Ghahremani was arrested more than two years ago on charges that he had killed a man with whom he had a financial dispute. In a report published Monday in Mizan Online, an Iranian news agency, the prosecutor for the city of Kermanshah, where Ghahremani lived, offered details about the killing, saying that the victim had been stabbed five times, including in his back and neck.
The prosecutor said Ghahremani had confessed to the crime and that the execution had been carried out in compliance with Iranian law after the victim’s family had twice declined referrals to the Dispute Resolution Council, a government body through which citizens can negotiate disputes outside of the formal justice system.
Iran’s penal code is based in part on Islamic Sharia law, which requires qisas, or retaliation in kind, for certain crimes but allows blood money to the family of the deceased as an acceptable recompense in cases of manslaughter. But according to statements spread on Telegram in May by Iranian Jewish leaders, the victim’s family repeatedly refused offers of payment, known as diyat, and attempts by the community to mediate the issue with Islamic leaders were unsuccessful.
The May statement noted that the Jewish community had offered to fund a school or mosque named after the deceased, but the offer was not accepted.
The nonprofit Iran Human Rights, which operates out of Norway, said Ghahremani had been hanged at Kermanshah’s central prison. The group tied Ghahremani’s execution to Iran’s explosive conflict with Israel, which has included a recent volley of strikes and a report Sunday that Iranian leaders are readying a “strong and complex” attack in response to Israel’s recent bombing of Iranian military facilities.
“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic Republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian-Jewish citizen, today,” said the group’s director, Mahmood Amiri-Moghadam, in a statement. “Like many of those sentenced to qisas, Arvin’s case and the judicial process had significant flaws. However, in addition to this, Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalized anti-Semitism in the Islamic Republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the implementation of his sentence.”
Ghahremani was among the estimated 8,500 Jews who still live in Iran, following an exodus of most of Iran’s once-major Jewish population after the 1979 revolution that put Islamic leaders in charge.
While Iranian Jews must be cautious about their contact with the Persian Jewish diaspora, the Kermanshah Jewish community drew attention to Ghahremani’s case by circulating messages on WhatsApp. Many used his Hebrew name, Arvin Netanel Ben Siona. One included a desperate voice note from his mother. “I am asking everyone to help pray,” Sonia Saadati said in a tear-filled message in Farsi.
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