The murderer of a political prisoner has been sentenced to Qisas (an eye for an eye or retribution in-kind, according to Sharia law), the spokesman of the Islamic Republic's Judiciary announced.
Alireza Shir-Mohammad-Ali, 21, was stabbed to death on June 10, 2019, in the capital city's infamous prison, the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary (GTCP) aka Fashafouyeh.
The young political prisoner was stabbed more than thirty times in a premeditated plan by Hamidreza Shoja'ii Zavareh as the mastermind and an accomplice, while he had protested for being kept next to criminals charged with murder, rape, and burglary.
The main killer known as Khoroos (rooster) was on death row for murder when he stabbed the young political prisoner to death.
Dissidents and activists suspected this was a murder ordered by intelligence organs who recruited the two convicts to kill the young anti-regime activist.
The Qisas verdict against the killer can be used as an argument by authorities that they had nothing to do with the murder and handed out a harsh sentence in the case.
The accomplice was sentenced to 25 years and paying blood money, the judiciary's spokesman, Gholam Hossein Esmaeili said on Tuesday, July 23.
Based on Article 69 of the State Prisons Organization's regulations, authorities are required to divide prisoners according to the nature of their convictions.
Shir Mohammad Ali was arrested after massive anti-regime protests last summer. Subsequently, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of "blasphemy, insulting the former and current supreme leaders and propaganda against the regime".
While the initial court had sentenced Shir Mohammad Ali to eight years' discretionary prison sentence, the court of appeals was scheduled to review his case on July 9.
He protested living and health conditions at GTCP and the lack of safety inside the prison. The penitentiary is located 32 kilometers (approximately 20 miles) south of the capital.
GTCP was initially built as a concentration camp for drug-related convicts. However, intelligence agents often punish political prisoners and prisoners of conscience by exiling them there.
There have been numerous reports about inhumane living conditions at the prison, Iran Human Rights Monitor (IHRM) reported on June 11.
Relatives of Shir Mohammad Ali buried him in a private funeral on June 12. Reportedly, he used to manage a Telegram Channel under the title of "Atheists."
