Two Iranian brothers, Abdollah and Mohammad Fathi, were executed today in Esfahan, says the Campaign to End Capital Punishment in Iran, citing the father of the two young men.
“Abdollah Fathi, 29, and Mohmmad Fathi 27, were arrested together last March with five other individuals and charged with armed robbery,” Bijan Fathi, the father of the two brothers, told Zamaneh.
He reported that the judiciary had first accused these seven individuals of committing several armed robberies and murdering a number of people in some cities. However, since there were no murder victims, they pursued two counts of armed robbery charges, which finally led to the charge of “enmity against God’ (Moharebeh).
Bijan Fathi says his sons were sentenced to death because of his own political activites before and after the 1979 Revolution.
Bijan Fathi left Iran in December of 2009 and currently resides in Turkey.
“I was in charge of Mohammad Khatami’s election campaign and was involved in the founding of the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front,” he told Zamaneh. He went on to claim that his sons were tortured, and all their confessions were extracted under pressure.
“They were sentenced to death in just two hours in court.” He said. “In the appeals court, which was held without the presence of lawyers or the accused, five others were acquitted of the charge of Moharebeh and are now serving out prison terms.”
On his personal website, the prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafai describes the legal procedures leading to the Fathi brothers’ as questionable, maintaining that the young men were not “deserving of the death penalty.”
