TEHRAN – Iran executed eight men convicted over the 2017 Daesh attack onIran’s parliament and the shrine of the Islamic Republic’s foundingAyatollah, the bloodiest terror attack to strike Tehran in decades, theauthorities said on Saturday.
The June 7, 2017 attack has so far been the only assault by the extremistgroup in Iran, which has been deeply involved in the wars in Iraq and Syriawhere the militants once held vast territory.
Daesh has since been beaten back by Iranian-aided Shiite militias in Iraq,as well as by a US-led coalition operating in both countries, though Iranhas made other arrests involving the group in the time since.
The judiciary’s official Mizan news agency announced the executionsSaturday morning, but did not say when or where they took place. The headof Tehran’s Justice Department, Gholamhossein Esmaili, told Iranian statetelevision that authorities conducted the executions days earlier but chosenot to immediately announce them, likely as a security measure.
Executions in Iran are carried out by hangings.
Mizan noted in its report that the executions came after the eight men hadbeen tried and convicted in a trial that included both eyewitness testimonyand video footage showing their involvement by providing the attackerssupport in the days leading up to the assault.
“These eight worked directly … in martyring and wounding a number ofinnocent compatriots,” Mizan said.
The news agencies on Saturday named those executed as Soleiman Mozafari,Esmail Sufi, Rahman Behrouz, Majed Mortezai, Sirous Azizi, Ayoub Esmaili,Khosro Ramezani and Osman Behrouz. Over a dozen others remain on trial overthe attack.
While Iran is one of the world’s top enforcers of the death penalty, suchmass executions are rare. In August 2016, human rights activists criticizedIran for carrying out the mass execution of 20 convicted Sunni militantsfrom a group identified as Jihad and Tawhid after a six-year trial.
The June 2017 Daesh attack killed at least 18 people and wounded more than50. It saw gunmen carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives stormthe parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress,starting an hours-long siege.
Meanwhile, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum on Tehran’s southern outskirts. Khomeini ledthe 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to becomeIran’s first supreme leader until his death in 1989.
The assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks inthe decades after the years-long tumult surrounding the Islamic Revolution.The image of a child being passed out of a window at parliament under thewatch of armed security forces remains seared in the minds of many.
Iran’s security forces responded with heavy force. Authorities arrestedsuspected Daesh militants, including their wives. In August 2017, Iran’sIntelligence Ministry said it detained 27 militants linked to the Daeshgroup who planned to attack holy Shiite cities within the country.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard responded to the attack bylaunching six ballistic missiles into eastern Syria targeting Daeshmilitants. It marked the first time Iran had fired its missiles in angersince its 1980s war with Iraq.
That raised new concerns in the West about its ballistic missile programamid the unraveling of its nuclear deal with world powers. That deal is nowin danger of collapse with America’s withdrawal from the accord. Economicproblems, water scarcity and other woes meanwhile have led to protests inIran.