March 29 – A senior police officer in Iran was sentenced to death this week for killing a man during the 2022 anti-government protests which swept the country, according to local media.
Police chief Jafar Javanmardi was found guilty of killing 27-year-old Mehran Samak, after the officer opened fire during the demonstrations.
Javanmardi was sentenced to death on the charge of premeditated murder, according to Majid Ahmadi, the lawyer for the victim’s family.
An open letter sent to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and signed by 85 Iranian Americans, called for the removal of a post on social media, supporting the campaigning efforts of Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, an outspoken critic of the current regime in Iran who has been imprisoned for her views.
The post, published on the State Department’s Persian language X account and Instagram page, called Rafsanjani a “champion of women rights across Iran.” Rafsanjani is the daughter of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is widely considered to be a key figure responsible for the regime’s creation.
The post was branded distasteful by Iranians, who questioned the motivation behind Ms. Rafsanjani’s activism.
And Iran was listed by the United Nations as a country facing an extreme water crisis in its annual water development report.
The report held that the country was experiencing extremely high water stress, which the UN defines as the measurements of the ratio of total water withdrawals to available renewable surface and groundwater supplies.
Human induced climate change, vanishing glaciers and poor water management are among the reasons causing the water crisis in Iran.
