Mohammad Mehdi Karami (محمد مهدی کرمی) was a 22-year-old karate athlete from Karaj executed by the Islamic Republic on 7 January 2023, convicted of mofsed-e-filarz (corruption on earth) for alleged involvement in the killing of a Basij officer during the 40th-day memorial for protester Hadis Najafi.
Tried by Branch 1 of the Karaj Revolutionary Court under judge Moosa Asef al-Hosseini. Sentenced on 30 November 2022, sentence upheld by the Supreme Court on 3 January 2023, hanged on 7 January 2023. Karami and co-defendant Hosseini both stated in court that confessions had been obtained under torture. Karami was reportedly subjected to sexual violence by interrogators. The defendants were denied effective access to independent legal counsel. State TV broadcast the confessions as the centerpiece of its public case.
The state needed bodies hanged in public to break the protests, and the Revolutionary Court delivered. Karami was a 22-year-old athlete whose family begged on camera and was ignored, whose lawyers said he had been tortured into the confession the state broadcast on prime time, and who went to the gallows under a charge that has no equivalent in any functioning legal system. The Karami execution is not a trial outcome. It is the regime's logic of deterrence written on a person.
Because the November 2022 to May 2023 protest-related executions, eight men in total, were the Islamic Republic's deliberate choice to escalate the cost of dissent. Karami's case is the most documented torture-confession case in that group.
Who he was
محمد مهدی کرمی (Mohammad Mehdi Karami) was a 22-year-old karate athlete from Karaj. Iran’s Revolutionary Court convicted him under the charge of mofsed-e-filarz (corruption on earth) in connection with the killing of a Basij paramilitary officer, Ruhollah Ajamian, during the 40th-day memorial gathering for Hadis Najafi in November 2022. He was hanged on 7 January 2023 alongside Seyed Mohammad Hosseini. Both men told the court their confessions had been extracted under torture. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN human rights office condemned the trial as grossly unfair. His father’s televised plea to spare his son’s life was ignored. The court did not allow the family a final visit.
Sources
- BBC News: Iran protests, two men hanged (7 January 2023)
- Amnesty International: condemnation of Karami and Hosseini executions
- Human Rights Watch: Iran end protester executions (January 2023)
- OHCHR: UN rights chief deplores Karami and Hosseini executions
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