Iran said yesterday that it had executed two men for plotting to overthrow the regime. They are the first to be put to death after more than 100 dissidents went on trial following President Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election last June.

The hangings of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour marked an escalation in the regime’s attempts to crush the opposition movement through Iran’s clerical courts.

The two men were hanged before dawn, hours before prosecutors announced death sentences for five more opposition members arrested in connection with the protests on the Shia holy day of Ashura last month in which eight demonstrators were killed and hundreds arrested. The number of alleged dissidents sentenced to death is now at least 11.

Mr Zamani and Mr Rahmanipour were convicted after allegedly confessing to membership of a militant royalist group and involvement in a Western-backed bomb plot to disrupt the election. Lawyers and relatives protested that they had no connection to the protests, noting that they had been arrested three months before the election and had confessed to a mosque bombing that had been written off earlier as an accidental blast.

“An execution with this speed and rush has only one explanation: the Government is trying to prevent the expansion of the current movement through the spread of fear and intimidation,” said Nasrin Sotoudeh, Mr Rahmanipour’s lawyer.

The White House condemned the executions, saying that they marked a low point in the regime’s unjust and ruthless crackdown on peaceful dissent. Amnesty International said the executions were shocking and showed that “the Iranian authorities will stop at nothing to stamp out the peaceful protests that persist since the election”. It added: “These men were first unfairly convicted and now they have been unjustly killed. Their ‘confessions’ appear to have been made under duress.” The rights group said it feared that “these executions are just the beginning”. The hangings send a powerful warning to the so-called Green Movement, which has gathered momentum despite the regime’s efforts to crush it. What began as a show of support for the defeated reformist presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has grown into a highly organised protest movement, plunging Iran into its worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and threatening the future of the clerical regime.

Opposition supporters have been urging protesters to take to the streets on February 11, the 31st anniversary of the revolution.

Mr Rahmanipour and Mr Zamani were found guilty of being “enemies of God” and of belonging to the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, which seeks the return of the monarchy.

In August, Mr Rahmanipour, 19, was reported to have confessed to receiving training from Western governments in how to foment instability during the June election. However, Ms Sotoudeh said that he had been arrested along with his family, including his pregnant sister, in April last year and coerced into the confession. “He confessed because of threats against his family,” she said.

Source: TimesOnline