The Iranian authorities are reported to have halted the impending executions of three anti-government protestors, following a social media campaign.
The Persian hashtag #do_not_execute was used 7.5 million times after it was announced on Tuesday that the Supreme Court had upheld their death sentences.
Many celebrities backed the campaign.
A retrial has now been ordered. The three men had been arrested during street protests last November in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed.
Lawyers for the three men also were reportedly told that they could for the first time examine the court papers and evidence against their clients.
Amirhossein Moradi, Mohammad Rajabi and Saeed Tamjidi, who are all reportedly in their 20s, were arrested during November’s unrest, which was triggered by the government’s decision to raise the price of petrol.
Iran is the world’s second most prolific state executioner after China.
Despite having to deal with the Middle East’s biggest outbreak of Covid-19, which has killed more than 13,000 people and deepened an economic crisis, the Iranian authorities have not stopped trying capital cases and carrying out death sentences.
Early on Tuesday, two Kurdish men were executed in Urumieh prison in West Azerbaijan province.
Diaku Rasoulzadeh and Saber Sheikh Abdollah, who were in their early 20s and 30s respectively, had been on death row since 2015. They were convicted of planting a bomb at a military parade in Mahabad in 2010.
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SOURCE: BBC News, Jiyar Gol
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