This grab taken from a UGC video made available on the ESN platform on 15 November, 2022, shows Iranian protesters blocking traffic in the northern city of Rasht as they chant "freedom" while removing a street sign. Photo: AFP / Source: Anonymous / ESN
[b Four people have been sentenced to death on the charge of "enmity against God" in connection with the recent anti-government protests in Iran.
Revolutionary Courts in Tehran said one of the unnamed "rioters" hit and killed a policeman with his car, the judiciary's Mizan news agency said.
The second possessed a knife and a gun, and the third blocked traffic and caused "terror", it alleged.
The fourth was convicted of a knife attack, Mizan reported late on Tuesday.
Human rights activists condemned the death sentences - which brought the total to five since Sunday - saying they were the results of unfair trials.
"Protesters don't have access to lawyers in the interrogation phase, they are subjected to physical and mental torture to give false confessions, and sentenced based on the confessions," the director of Norway-based Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, told AFP news agency.
At least 348 protesters have been killed and 15,900 others arrested in a crackdown by security forces on what Iran's leaders have portrayed as foreign-backed "riots", according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which is also based outside the country.
At least 15 detainees are believed to be facing security-related charges that are punishable by death under Iran's Sharia-based legal system, including "enmity against God" and "corruption on Earth".
The women-led protests against clerical rule erupted after the death in custody two months ago of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly breaking the strict rules on hijabs.
Waves of protests have swept Iran since the death in custody in September of Mahsa Amini, detained by morality police for allegedly breaking the strict rules on hijabs. Photo: AFP / UGC
The judiciary's announcements came after seven people were reportedly killed amid a fresh wave of unrest that began on Tuesday.
Activists called for three days of demonstrations and strikes to commemorate "Bloody November" - a reference to the deadly crackdown on the last major wave of protests that began on 15 November 2019, when many Iranians reacted angrily to a sudden increase in fuel prices.
Videos posted on social media on Tuesday showed crowds in Tehran and other major cities chanting slogans against the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including "death to the dictator".
At a metro station in the capital, protesters set fire to a headscarf on a platform as a crowd shouted that Ayatollah Khamenei "will be toppled".
Another video from a metro station appeared to show officers beating people inside a train carriage, while in a third, people were seen running and falling over as security forces allegedly opened fire.
On Wednesday, Kurdish human rights group Hengaw reported that a male protester was shot and killed by security forces in the north-western city of Kamyaran, in Mahsa Amini's home province of Kurdistan.
He had been standing near the house of another man who was killed by direct fire from security forces on Tuesday, it said. Another two men were also killed in the nearby city of Sanandaj, it added.
Hengaw, which is based in Norway, also said that protesters seized control of the city of Bukan, in neighbouring West Azerbaijan province, on Tuesday night.
State media reported on Wednesday that "rioters" shot dead two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including a colonel, in Bukan and Kamyaran.
They also said that a cleric who was a member of the paramilitary Basij Resistance Force, which is controlled by the IRGC, died after being hit by a Molotov cocktail in the southern city of Shiraz.
State media have so far reported the deaths of 38 security personnel since the protests began. HRANA has put the toll at 43.
- BBC