Iran Executes Kurdish Activist

Ethnic groups have also stepped up their opposition. An explosion in Baluchestan killed at 41 people, including top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. An ethnic Baluchi opposition group, Jundollah, took responsibility for the bombing.

TORONTO - Iran executed a Kurdish activist, Ehsan Fattahian, by hanging Wednesday morning in a prison in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, his lawyer, Nassrollah Nassri, said.
Mr. Fattahian, 28, had been sentenced to death after he was accused of "armed struggle against the regime."

He was arrested more than one year ago in the Kurdish city of Kamyaran and received a 10-year prison term. But in an unusual move, an appeals court changed his sentence to death by hanging after the prosecutor general of Kamyaran demanded a tougher punishment against him.
At least 13 other Kurdish activists are in prison on death row.
"The execution was carried out between 6:30 to 7 a.m. local time this morning," Mr. Nassri said in a telephone interview about two hours after the execution. "His family has been informed to go and bury his body."

His execution appeared to be part of efforts by the government to extinguish opposition in the wake of Iran's disputed presidential elections, which touched off waves of protests President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed an overwhelming victory. His opponents have accused him of rigging the results.

Ethnic groups have also stepped up their opposition since the protests broke out. At least four senior officials - the Friday prayer leader in Sanandaj, the city's representative to the senior clerical body of the Assembly of Experts, a judge and a member of the city Council - have been assassinated in the past months.

Last month, an explosion in the southern province of Sistan-Baluchestan killed at 41 people, including top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. An ethnic Baluchi opposition group, Jundollah, took responsibility for the bombing.
Before his execution, Mr. Fattahian wrote in a letter that the opposition in the Iranian province of Kurdistan would not end with his death, opposition Web sites reported "My death and the death of thousands of others like me will not solve the issue of Kurdistan; they will only add to the fames of fire."

Mr. Fattahian was a member of the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan, an outlawed militant group by Iran, which has often carried out attacks in western Iran against the government.

There are increasing worries that Iran could start implementing more executions to silence the opposition, which has continued to simmer despite the violence that the government has used. At least one protestor, Muhammad-Reza Ali-Zamani has been sentenced to death.

"The execution today is very alarming," said Omid Memarian, a consultant at Human Rights Watch. "We are faced with a new wave of violence by the government which is only comparable to the early days after the revolution."

The government executed many following the 1979 Islamic revolution after summary trials.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/middleeast/12iran.html