The days go by and the tension in the world of Iranian sports grows. Today marks a week since the Islamic Republic news agency announced that footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani had been found guilty of “rebellion against the state or an Islamic ruler.”
This charge, under the law of the Islamic Republic, is punishable by the death penalty. Since then, little is known about what the outcome will be for this 26-year-old man who, although he can appeal his sentence, he has not been able to choose his defense, according to his family. He remains at the mercy of a defender chosen by the justice system, as is the case with most prisoners sentenced to death.
Since the publication of the news, dozens of active and retired players from the Iranian professional league have called through social networks for the death penalty to be revoked for this player who has been described as a “reserved” man, according to one of his ex-mates.
His career as a professional soccer player began in 2014, when he played for the first time in the first local league. Since then, he has gone through some of the top teams, notably the Tabriz city Trator which has some of the most passionate fans in the country. He would also have been a member of the youth national team at the time.
Azadani is on the list of at least 20 people –according to versions collected by Amnesty International– who are about to be executed, although Iranian justice only acknowledges that it has sentenced 11 people to death. Two of them have been publicly executed. They are Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, both 23 years old. Shekari was found guilty of causing mayhem and wounding militants with a knife. Rahnavard – hanging from a crane in the city of Mashad – was linked to the murder of two militiamen.
Hours after his death, Iranian public television broadcast the confession of these young people that they agreed to be involved in the cases with which they were related. Forced confessions are widely documented in Iran, dozens of ex-prisoners have recounted how they are forced to confess crimes they did not commit threatened with dozens of arguments, including the safety of their family.
The case of Amir Nasr-Azadani would be similar to the previous cases. The soccer player is accused of being one of the three responsible for the death of a police colonel and two members of the paramilitary forces (basijis) on November 17 in the city of Isfahan, in central Iran. People close to Azadani have assured that although he has participated in the protests, that day he was far from the place where the confrontation with the State forces took place.
Protests had spread across the country two months before that incident in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl who was captured by the morality police in Tehran on September 13. Two hours later Mahsa or Gina, by her name in Kurdish, was taken to a brain-dead hospital, the hospital center said in a statement on Instagram that moments later disappeared from the web. The young woman died three days later. The forensic report has been challenged by dozens of doctors and the family, which ensures that the young woman was beaten during detention.
For a large sector of society -especially women-, who have witnessed the violence with which the morality police treated those who do not respect the supposed “good Islamic dress”, there is no doubt that Mahsa died as a result of the abuses of this force of the State. This belief became greater once the protests began. The brutality with which the authorities have attacked the young people who have taken to the streets has increased the mistrust of the population.
According to the Oslo-based organization Iran Human Rights, 458 people have been killed so far. 63 of them are children and 29 women. They are joined by more than 18,000 people who have been imprisoned since then. Among them are dozens of people related to the world of sports, especially soccer, who have expressed their support for the popular mobilization. Most of them are already out on bail, but some pay a heavy price for it.
