Two veteran Iranian Supreme Court judges, known for handling high-profile cases, were shot dead in Tehran by an assailant who later took his own life.
The judiciary’s media office was cited by state-affiliated media as saying that the attacker had no pending legal cases. Details of the incident remain unclear, but the Iranian judiciary said the assailant killed the two senior judges in a “planned assassination” inside the court and attempted to flee before taking his own life.
A guard was injured in the attack, judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said, according to Mizan News Agency.
Judge Mohammad Moghiseh and Judge Ali Razini were veteran justices who for decades headed courts involved in trying protesters, artists and activists.
Moghiseh was sanctioned by the United States in 2019 for overseeing “countless unfair trails, during which charges went unsubstantiated and evidence was disregarded.” He was sanctioned by the European Union eight years prior.
In one case alone he sentenced eight Iranian Facebook users to a combined 127 years in prison for anti-regime publicity and insults to religion. He had also tried filmmakers and poets for “propaganda against the state,” the US Treasury Department said.
In another case in 2019, he sentenced prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and women’s rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes, according to Amnesty International.
In 1999, Razini survived an assassination attempt after a bomb was attached to his vehicle, Iran’s Fars news agency said. Along with former president Ebrahim Raisi, he is accused of being one of the judges involved in “Death Commission” – an infamous committee that oversaw the prosecution and execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.