Iran executes 3 men over violence during last year's anti-government protests

Iran executed three men on Friday over recent protests, the country's judiciary said on Twitter.

Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi were executed in the central city of Isfahan, it said.

They were implicated in the deaths of two members of the Basij paramilitary force and a law enforcement officer in November during nationwide protests.

Rights groups say the three were subjected to torture, forced into televised confessions and denied due process.

The protests erupted last September after the death of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country's morality police for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code.

The demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the theocracy that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The demonstrations have largely subsided in recent months, though there are still sporadic acts of defiance, including the refusal of a growing number of women to wear the hijab, the Islamic headscarf that is legally mandatory in Iran.

Prisoners tortured, say rights groups

Iran has executed a total of seven people in connection with the protests. Rights groups say they and several others who have been sentenced to death were convicted by secretive state security courts and denied the right to defend themselves.

"The prosecution relied on forced 'confessions,' and the indictment was riddled with irregularities that reveal this was a politically motivated case," Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, said of the three executed on Friday.

The group said Kazemi had called a relative and accused authorities of torturing him by flogging his feet, using a stun gun and threatening him with sexual assault.

London-based Amnesty International also criticized the cases.

'Don't let them kill us'

"The shocking manner in which the trial and sentencing of these protesters was fast-tracked through Iran's judicial system amid the use of torture-tainted 'confessions', serious procedural flaws and a lack of evidence is another example of the Iranian authorities' brazen disregard for the rights to life and fair trial," said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday called on Iran not to carry out the executions of the three men.

The three men had on Wednesday appealed to the public for support in a handwritten note saying, "Don't let them kill us."