Iran airs televised confession of wrestler after Trump tweet

Iran has broadcast the televised confession of a wrestler facing the death penalty after a tweet from US President Donald Trump criticizing the case, a segment that resembled hundreds of other suspected coerced confessions aired over the last decade in the Islamic Republic.

The case of 27-year-old Navid Afkari has drawn the attention of a social media campaign that portrays him and his brothers as victims targeted over participating in protests against Iran’s Shiite theocracy in 2018. The television segment and authorities accuse Afkari of stabbing a water supply company employee in the southern city of Shiraz amid the unrest.

“To the leaders of Iran, I would greatly appreciate if you would spare this young man’s life, and not execute him,” Trump wrote Friday. “Thank you!”

Iran responded to Trump’s tweet with a nearly 11-minute state TV package on Afkari. It included the weeping parents of the slain water company employee, Hassan Torkaman. The package also showed footage of Afkari on the back of a motorbike, saying he had stabbed Torkaman in the back, without explaining why he allegedly carried out the assault.

The footage resembled what one report has described as the at-least 355 coerced confessions aired by Iranian state television over the last decade.

— AP