🔗 Share this article

Over 20 Olympic medal winners, mentors and further international athletes have signed a statement urging a end to the capital punishment of a champion boxer and trainer, who is facing execution in the country.

Growing Worldwide Condemnation

During increasing worldwide anger over the country's escalating use of executions as a means of repression, the powerfully expressed statement denounces the Iranian regime's ruling to confirm the capital punishment of the boxing champion.

The athlete, 30, from the city in north-east Iran, was taken into custody for participating in countrywide demonstrations in two thousand nineteen and indicted of backing an resistance movement. He has spent five years in detention, where he has been mistreated and kept in isolation.

“Competition is intended to encourage hope, unity, and courage,” the signatories expressed. “The death penalty of a champion for his opinions is a blatant attack on these principles and a admonition to every athlete who attempts to voice opinions.

Pattern of Killing Competitors

The letter pointed out that the boxer's case was not unique and emphasized Iran’s record of sentencing to death sports champions for their views, such as a football captain, skipper of the football side, and a women's sports leader, skipper of the national women’s volleyball team. In two thousand twenty, Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old national sports titleholder, faced the death penalty.

Additional signatories to the letter comprise a sailing champion, who captained the inaugural women's squad in a international sailing event and was the pioneering lady to be awarded a esteemed yachting trophy; the former captain of the Australian football team Craig Foster; and a footballer, who was in the Iranian squad for the 1978 World Cup.

Arrest and Unfair Trial

Vafaei Sani was detained in the spring of 2020. The accusations against him entailed “promoting decay on Earth through fire-setting and damage of public property”. His verdict has been reversed twice but on 4 October it was maintained on the third attempt. His court case was denounced as “grossly unfair” by advocates and bodies.

Call to UN

The call to halt the athlete's death sentence is subsequent to a earlier letter to the global human rights chief for rights, signed by over a hundred human rights experts and groups, demanding action to prevent the sports figure's death.

Death Penalty Surge

According to findings, there is an “death penalty surge in the country, which has reached horrific proportions”. In the year 2023, the government executed at least eight hundred fifty-three people – a forty-eight percent rise on the previous year. Last year, statistics showed 972 capital punishments, constituting the maximum count since 2015. Over eight hundred people have been sentenced so far in the current year.

Dissidents and dissidents are targets, particularly in the wake of the the year 2022 demonstrations. Specialists say the Iranian authorities have utilized the capital punishment to stifle dissent, generate apprehension among the population and reinforce their hold on authority.