Iran judicial chief says protest instigators to receive no leniency

The head of Iran’s judiciary warns that those behind a recent wave of anti-government protests could expect punishment “without the slightest leniency.”

What began earlier this month as demonstrations against the high cost of living boiled over into a broader protest movement that represented the gravest challenge to the Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership in years.

The protests have abated following a deadly government crackdown, carried out under an internet blackout that left the country largely cut off from the outside world.

“The people rightly demand that the accused and the main instigators of the riots and the acts of terrorism and violence be tried as quickly as possible and punished if found guilty,” judicial chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei is quoted as saying by the official Mizan online news portal.

He goes on to say that “the greatest rigor must be applied in the investigations,” but insists that “justice entails judging and punishing without the slightest leniency the criminals who took up arms and killed people, or committed arson, destruction and massacres.”