Jay Deshmukh
AFP
January 24, 2011
TEHRAN — Iran hanged on Monday two activists it said were members of an exiled group and who had joined protests against the result of the 2009 presidential poll, despite Washington urging that they be freed.
The executions were the first reported hangings of protesters who took to the streets in their thousands following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a June 2009 election they said was rigged.
The Tehran prosecutor’s office named the pair as Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei. It did not say where they were hanged.
“Two elements of the Monafeghin (hypocrites) group named Jafar Kazemi… and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei … were executed early today,” the prosecutor’s office said on its website, referring to the Iranian exiled opposition group, People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI).
On August 10, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had urged the Iranian authorities to release the two activists, despite the PMOI being on Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organisations.
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