Iran has broadcast the televised confession of a wrestler facing the death penalty after a tweet from President Donald Trump criticising the case, a segment that resembled hundreds of other suspected coerced confessions aired over the last decade in the Islamic Republic.
The case of 27-year-old Navid Afkari has drawn the attention of a social media campaign that portrays him and his brothers as victims targeted over participating in protests against Iran’s Shiite theocracy in 2018.
The television segment and authorities accuse Afkari of stabbing a water supply company employee in the southern city of Shiraz amid the unrest.
Afkari’s case has drawn international attention and revived a demand inside the country that Iran, one of the world’s top executioners, stop carrying out the death penalty. Even imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, herself nearly a month into a hunger strike over conditions at Tehran’s Evin prison amid the coronavirus pandemic, has passed word that she supports Afkari.