Iran’s Supreme Leader orders unprecedented crackdown

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 12 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the head of the country’s judiciary to deal “decisively” with “elements creating disruption in society” and sentence them to “the most severe punishment that God has prescribed”, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote in its Tuesday edition.

“Following a report by the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office to the chief of the judiciary which was later presented by him to the Supreme Leader, the Leader issued an order to deal decisively with trouble-makers”, the hard-line daily Jomhouri Islami quoted the head of Tehran’s Justice Department, Abbas-Ali Alizadeh, as saying.

“We must not even give these people the right to life”, Alizadeh said of those he called “trouble-makers”. He said special tribunals had been set up to deal expeditiously with these persons.

The report also added that Khamenei had ordered Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi to hand down “decisive, divine sentences to trouble-makers”.

Iran’s clerical rulers often refer to public hangings, amputation of limbs, and other such punishment as “divine sentences”.

“It is necessary, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the State Security Forces, to wage a fierce fight against such persons”, Supreme Leader Khamenei was quoted as saying.

The daily added that following the decree, Shahroudi called on judges to issue “more severe sentences” and to take more seriously the new “national security initiative” to punish “trouble-makers”.

Tehran’s top judge added that the judiciary planned to “create insecurity for trouble-makers” and “not give these people a right to life”.

Authorities routinely refer to anti-government activists or ordinary people deemed to act in un-Islamic ways as trouble-makers.