Iranian Sunni Cleric Urges Regime To “Return Soldiers To Their Bases”

Iranwire – Iran’s most prominent Sunni cleric has again used his Friday sermon to urge the country’s Shia leadership to stop executing protesters, saying it cannot hold onto power by force.

“The system cannot be maintained by using armed soldiers, force and prisons. No one should kill the soldiers. Soldiers should also not kill people who don’t have a weapon and do not fight against them,” said Molavi Abdolhamid, the Friday prayer leader in the eastern city of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchistan Province.

“Return soldiers to their bases, let them stay there and try to defend the country and refrain from beating their own people,” Molavi said.

“These protests will not be silenced by killing and executing people…stop charging people with Moharebeh,” in reference to the capital offense “waging war against God.”

Last week, Abdolhamid called on the clerical regime to show leniency toward the thousands of protesters who have been detained and prosecuted since nationwide protests kicked off more than three months ago.

The Iranian authorities have cracked down hard on the wave of protests sparked by the September 16 death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehran’s morality police. The protest movement has grown to become one of the biggest threats to the clerical regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

At least 469 people have been killed by security forces, including 63 children, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group says. More than 18,000 other people have reportedly been detained. Dozens have been handed capital punishment or are facing charges that carry a death sentence. Iran carried out the first two executions earlier this month, triggering international condemnation.

The demonstrations and state clampdown have been particularly intense in the country’s western Kurdish areas and the eastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan, home to a Sunni Baluch minority.