«The Iranian embassy in Rome has mounted a camera on top of a gallows. This is a clear intimidation against those demonstrating outside the embassy. The Italian government does not tolerate this disfigurement and make itself heard with unequivocal words”. This is what the Pd denounces through Lia Quartapelle, Pd vice president in the Montecitorio Foreign Affairs Committee. ‘Immediately summon the ambassador. Intolerable outrage. Manifest. This horror is not bearable,” adds Pd senator Filippo Sensi on Twitter.
The protests
On 24 May a demonstration in front of the Iranian embassy in via Nomentana was promoted by the Donne Vita Libertà committee of Iranian women and by Amnesty International Italy. “We are here with Iranian women against the Islamo-fascist regime in Tehran which continues to send men, young people and girls to the gallows and prisons guilty only of asking for freedom and democracy in that country” explained Elisabetta Piccolotti, deputy of the Left Green Alliance.
Death sentences
Iran has been rocked by a protest movement since the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian girl Mahsa on September 16, 2022, three days after her arrest by morality police who accused her of breaking the strict dress code imposed on women, especially the use of the veil.
On May 19, three men arrested in November and sentenced to death in January for involvement in the deaths of law enforcement officials during protests were hanged. Amnesty International Italy recalled that with these last three executions we have reached “seven demonstrators hanged since the beginning of the protests, in a context in which Iran has already recorded 260 hangings this year alone, in addition to the 576 last year year”.
