Alireza Sepahi survived the gallows once, but the Islamic Republic came back for him - comment

In case you have somehow been living in ignorant bliss, the crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran are there for everybody to see.

They are visible in the bodies of protesters killed on Iran's streets, when lorries were filled with protesters and driven away to be dumped outside morgues or other locations after January’s massacres, in the prisons filled after successive uprisings, in the testimony of those who say they were beaten, tortured or forced to confess, and increasingly in the gallows erected for those who dared to challenge the state.

The UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission reported last month that between March and the end of August alone, Iranian authorities had executed at least 29 men in connection with the protests, five of them publicly, while more than 70 people remained at imminent risk of a death sentence or execution. The mission also detailed trials plagued by forced confessions, denial of access to lawyers, and violations of basic due process, among other legal transgressions.

All of those stories deserve to be told, but among them, one of the most heartbreaking is that of Alireza Sepahi, because in July, when the Islamic Republic came to kill him, his own heart stopped them.

Sepahi was born in 2001 and was arrested following the January uprising in Isfahan. He became one of the defendants in what is known as the Alikhani Square case, built around events on January 8, when, according to the Iranian judiciary, four members of the security forces were killed during clashes with protesters. The state accused defendants in the case of crimes including moharebeh, or "waging war against God," efsad-fil-arz, "corruption on earth," armed rebellion, carrying weapons, and involvement in the deaths of the four men. On Monday, when announcing Sepahi's execution alongside that of Alireza Raeisi, the judiciary's Mizan news agency stated the convictions had been upheld by the Supreme Court.

The circumstances under which those convictions were secured are another matter entirely.

Sepahi's arrest was violent from the beginning, former cellmate said

Human Rights Watch reported that at least 12 defendants in the Alikhani Square case were sentenced to death in mass proceedings and has documented the broader Iranian judiciary's systematic use of statements extracted under torture and reports supplied by security agencies. Amnesty International separately warned during the summer that defendants in the case faced execution following proceedings it regarded as grossly unfair. IranWire reported that dozens were arrested in connection with the case and that the defendants were given only a handful of short court sessions in which to defend themselves.

Sepahi's own arrest was, according to accounts subsequently given by a former cellmate, violent from the beginning. Iran International reported that security forces entered his family's home and shot him four times in the legs during his arrest. The former prisoner said he had personally seen the pellet wounds and recounted Sepahi's description of what happened: when the judge later suggested that he might have been shot while trying to escape, Sepahi replied that he had been shot inside his room. One pellet was reportedly lodged deeply enough in his thigh to require surgery.

What followed, according to the same former prisoner and Iranian civil rights activists, was approximately 26 days of interrogation and torture. Sepahi was allegedly struck in the face and beaten on his already wounded legs until they began bleeding again. His mother, Somayeh Afshar, was reportedly brought close enough to hear or witness some of what was happening to her son. The former cellmate recalled Sepahi eventually crying out that he would sign whatever his interrogators wanted him to sign. Other defendants later told the court that statements they had given implicating Sepahi and others had been obtained through torture, sexual assault, or threats of rape. Those allegations have not been independently adjudicated, but they are part of a larger pattern of forced confessions documented by international human rights organizations in Iranian capital cases.

His mother was arrested too. Afshar is herself serving a five-year prison sentence at Dowlatabad Prison on charges including assembly and collusion and acting against national security. Sepahi's brother and teenage sister were also detained following his arrest, according to reporting based on accounts from people familiar with the family.

By July, the Islamic Republic’s machinery of execution began moving.

Two defendants in the Alikhani Square case, Erfan Esfandiari and Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, were executed on July 19. Days later, authorities prepared to execute Sepahi alongside his cousin Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amirhossein Safari Hosseinabadi. On the evening of July 27, an iron scaffold appeared in Alikhani Square itself - meant as a clear signal to protesters of the fate that awaited them. Residents understood what it meant too and turned out in force to protest the public execution. The regime was forced to deploy its security forces to disperse the crowd.

Sepahi never reached the gallows 

At dawn on July 28, Abolfazl Sepahi and Amirhossein Safari were publicly hanged. Alireza Sepahi was supposed to die with them, but he never reached the gallows.

Shortly before the execution, under the extraordinary psychological pressure of knowing that he was about to be hanged, Sepahi suffered what Human Rights Watch and Iran Human Rights described as a heart attack, while other reports called it a stroke or severe medical emergency. Whatever the exact medical specifics, he collapsed and was rushed to Al-Zahra Hospital in Isfahan, where he was resuscitated. His cousin and Safari were executed without him.

His heart had saved him this time, but only for two days. Then they returned him to Dastgerd Prison.

It is nearly impossible for anyone who lives in the West, who has grown up with freedom of speech, or any of the basic freedoms that we take for granted, to understand exactly how the regime treats its own citizens. Here, a man who was protesting for a better life was being taken by the state to be executed. His body failed him before the state could complete the task; doctors treated him and brought him back to life. Not for a second chance, though - but just so the Islamic Republic would be the ones to carry out the sentence.

Sepahi’s mother and sister, according to reports, wrote on Instagram that they wished he would not recover from his medical collapse, or even that he had died during the January uprising, because they could not bear the prospect of watching him eventually be hanged.

Imagine what kind of a regime you have to live under for a mother to wish that about her own son. But her son had survived, and when Sepahi was well enough to be executed, the regime had no second thoughts.

In early September, he was transferred once more to solitary confinement, raising fears that the execution was imminent. By then, his lawyer, Shahrzad Shahbazi, had secured a judicial review through Branch 39 of Iran's Supreme Court. Shahbazi said she expected the case to be examined while respecting the defendant's right to a proper defense.

Instead, according to Shahbazi, the parallel branch of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court rejected the request without even convening a hearing and sent the file directly to the sentence-enforcement department. She continued trying to pursue another review.

Sepahi was still in solitary confinement, but by Sunday, things were not looking up.

He and Alireza Raeisi were again moved into solitary confinement at Dastgerd Prison, and their families were summoned for what prisoners and their relatives know as the "final visit." Sepahi's mother was brought from the prison where she herself is serving her sentence so that she could see her son one last time.

That same day, another heartbreaking chapter was added to an already painful story.

Before their arrests, Sepahi had been engaged to a young woman named Mahshad Kashani. She too was imprisoned after the January protests and is serving a five-year sentence. They were both incarcerated, separated from one another, and apparently denied the ordinary life they had once expected to have together. But on Sunday, the two were wed, married over the telephone from their respective prisons.

Human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi recited their marriage vows. Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi summed up what followed in a single sentence: "He became a groom yesterday, and today they executed him."

At dawn on Monday, Alireza Sepahi was hanged at Dastgerd Prison. Raeisi was executed with him. With their deaths, seven defendants from the Alikhani Square case have now been executed.

Even then, the pain for Sepahi's family was not over when they were reportedly denied access to his body for burial.

IranWire reported that the family asked to bury him in Isfahan but was refused permission and told that his body would instead be transferred to Kashan. Iran International subsequently reported that he had been buried there. Similar restrictions on funerals and the return of bodies have repeatedly been reported after Iranian protest crackdowns, in part because funerals themselves can become centers of protest. Hundreds of relatives of protesters have reported since January how they have been denied any access to their loved ones’ bodies for burial. It is among the mounting crimes of the Islamic Republic against its own people.

There is a temptation when writing about the Islamic Republic regime to use increasingly elaborate adjectives: brutal, barbaric, medieval, monstrous. After more than four decades of domestic repression, perhaps the vocabulary begins to fail because every word has been used so many times before. It is simply evil.

Sepahi's story needs no drama or embellishment. He was arrested after a protest, shot during that arrest; he and other defendants alleged torture and coerced testimony, before being condemned to death in a mass case whose proceedings have been challenged by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN experts. He watched co-defendants, including his cousin, go to the gallows. When his own execution came, his heart gave out. So he was resuscitated, returned to prison, and put through the process again. His Supreme Court review was accepted and then rejected by another court without a hearing, according to his lawyer. His imprisoned mother came to say goodbye, while he married his imprisoned fiancée by telephone. Hours later, he was dead.

Another window into the regime we are fighting against

Public executions and the accelerating use of capital punishment against protesters inside Iran are a means of political repression intended to instill fear and deter further dissent. The UN Fact-Finding Mission reached a likewise grave conclusion about Iran's intensified use of the death penalty following January’s protests.

For those of us in Israel who spend so much time trying to understand the Islamic Republic as a military and geopolitical adversary, Sepahi's story offers yet another window into the regime we are fighting against. Its conduct abroad cannot be separated from the methods it uses to maintain power at home.

Through the many heartbreaking stories that have emerged from Iran over the past nine months, Alireza Sepahi’s is among the most painful. His heart saved him once from execution, so the Islamic Republic simply bided its time until it could carry out its punishment.