Iran boxer sentenced to death at ‘imminent’ risk of execution: rights groups

Iranian boxer Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani faces death sentence as a political prisoner (@fofi.ep / Instagram).

An Iranian boxer sentenced to death on charges of membership of an outlawed group is at imminent risk of execution after his request for a retrial was rejected, rights groups and the exiled opposition said on Wednesday.

The World Boxing Council and sporting luminaries including former tennis star Martina Navratilova have called on Iran to spare the life of Mohammad Javad Vafaei-Sani, 30, a silver medallist in the national boxing championship.

Vafaei-Sani was arrested in 2020 over involvement in 2019 protests, charged with membership of the People’s Mujahedin (PMOI, also known by the Persian acronym MEK) organisation, which is banned in Iran, and sentenced to death after being convicted of the capital crime of “corruption on earth”.

This week he was informed that his request for a retrial has been rejected by Iran’s Supreme Court, while his case has now been sent to the office for implementation of sentences, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said.

Meanwhile, his mother was “unexpectedly” granted a visit to her son held in the Vakilabad prison in the eastern city of Mashhad, it added. It is common in Iran for relatives to meet convicts for a final visit on the eve of execution.

There was no mention of the case in official media on Wednesday.

“His life is now in grave danger,” the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MEK’s political arm said in a statement, adding that the meeting with his mother “could signal his imminent execution”.

MEK spokesman Shahin Ghobadi told AFP that Vafaei-Sani was “affiliated” with the group and that over the last half decade the authorities “had, using extensive torture, tried hard to force him to renounce” his support of the MEK.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, said the boxer was at “imminent risk of execution” and had been “tortured to extract forced confessions”.

A joint statement published in November signed by over 20 athletes including Navratilova and British swimmer Sharron Davies urged governments worldwide to act to save his life saying his execution would be a “warning to every athlete who dares to speak out”.

The World Boxing Council also condemned the death sentence, with its president Mauricio Sulaiman Saldivar saying it would be an attack on the “fundamental values of sport and human dignity”.

Activists say that Iran’s clerical authorities are imposing a major crackdown in the wake of the June war with Israel marked by a surge in the use of capital punishment with at least 1,426 people hanged this year up to the end of November according to IHR.