Iran upholds death sentences for 3 people over fuel price hike protests

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s judiciary says that a court has upheld death sentences for three people linked to deadly protests last November sparked by a hike in gasoline prices.

The sentences were “confirmed by the supreme court after the defendants and their attorneys appealed,” spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili says, quoted by the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.

Esmaili doesn’t name the defendants, but says two were arrested during an “armed robbery.”

Evidence had been found on their phones of them setting alight banks, buses and public buildings in November, he says.

The demonstrations erupted on November 15 after authorities more than doubled fuel prices overnight, exacerbating economic hardships in the sanctions-hit country.

They rocked a handful of cities before spreading to at least 100 urban centers across the Islamic Republic.

Gas were torched, police stations attacked and shops looted, before security forces stepped in amid a near-total internet blackout.

“They had filmed it all audaciously, and sent (the footage) to some foreign news agencies,” Esmaili says in a video released by state television.

“They themselves had provided the best evidence.”

Iran has blamed last year’s violence on “thugs” backed by its foes the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It has pointed the finger at exiled royalists and the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), an exiled former rebel group which it considers a “terrorist cult.”

— AFP