Iran executes two members of banned group for targeting infrastructure

DUBAI (Reuters): Iran executed two members of the outlawed Mujahideen-e-Khalq opposition group for targeting civilian infrastructure with homemade projectiles, the judiciary news outlet Mizan reported on Sunday.

Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani-Eslamloo, “operational elements” of the MEK, were sentenced to death in a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court, Mizan said.

“The terrorists, in coordination with MEK leaders, had set up a team house in Tehran, where they built launchers and hand-held mortars in line with the group’s goals, fired projectiles heedlessly at citizens, homes, service and administrative facilities, educational and charity centres, and also carried out propaganda and information-gathering activities in support of the MEK,” the report said.

The defendants were indicted with “moharebeh”, an Islamic term meaning waging war against God, destroying public property and “membership in a terrorist organisation with the aim of disrupting national security.”

Semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday that Ehsani-Eslamloo had been arrested in 2022 following an explosion at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology claimed by the MEK.

The MEK, known in English as People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, was a powerful leftist-Islamist group that staged bombing campaigns against the shah’s government and U.S. targets in the 1970s but ultimately fell out with the other factions of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Since then, the MEK has opposed the Islamic Republic and its leadership in exile has been Paris-based. The group was listed as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and the European Union until 2012.