Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani was hanged at Kermanshah Central Prison in Iran on Monday morning, November 4, over a fatal stabbing he claimed was self defense. The execution took place after a two-year battle during which Ghahremani’s family and the local Jewish community was fighting to save his life, however, the stabbing victim’s family reportedly refused to accept financial settlement to prevent execution.
Ghahremani 20, was hanged at the central prison in the western city of Kermanshah after being convicted of a murder during a street fight, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group, reports The Times of Israel.
“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic Republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jewish citizen,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, stressing that the legal case had significant flaws.
IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam stressed that the legal case had significant flaws, adding that “Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalized antisemitism in the Islamic Republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the execution of his sentence.”
Ghahremani was allegedly defending himself against a knife attack when he killed Amir Shokri in a 2022 street fight. Both men was working out at a gym, and Shokri owed Ghahremani money. Shokri stabbed Ghahremani with a knife but the latter was able to wrestle the weapon from Shokri and stab him back, fatally injuring him.
Ghahremani’s family has said that the trial ignored key aspects of the defense’s claims including his efforts to get Shokri to a hospital and to save his life, details of which were missing from court papers.
Following the incident, Ghahremani’s family urged Shokri’s relatives to accept blood money under Iran’s Islamic law of retribution, which permits this alternative to avoid execution, however, the victim’s family had “refused to give consent” to such a deal.
Under Iranian law, once a person is found guilty of intentional murder, the only way that the death sentence can be commuted is if the family of the deceased says it forgives the perpetrator.
The Ynet reported that earlier this year, the victim’s family was pressed by a close aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the intelligence division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to not accept the financial settlement, reportedly due to Ghahremani’s Jewish ethnicity.
While Jewish Iranians were executed in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the execution of a Jewish Iranian is unprecedented in recent years.
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