Court sentences eight Daesh terrorists to death over Tehran attack

A court in Tehran has issued death sentences for eight Daesh terrorists over their role in an attack that killed 17 people in Tehran last year.  

The convicts, who had been attending court hearings since last month, were sentenced to death after being found guilty of “complicity in corruption on Earth,” head of Tehran’s Islamic Revolution courts Mousa Ghazanfarabadi said Sunday.

They are among 26 members of the Takfiri terror group which claimed responsibility for a simultaneous attack on Iran’s parliament and the mausoleum of the founder of the Islamic Republic in June 2017.

They have 20 days to appeal in Iran’s Supreme Court, Ghazanfarabadi said, adding the cases of the remaining 18 defendants will be addressed in due course.

Ghazanfarabadi said courts will also hear claims later filed by families of the victims against the United States and Saudi Arabia, which are widely believed to have created and supported Daesh.

Some of the attackers in Tehran were killed or arrested and dozens more were captured in the following months — many in operations along the borders with Iraq and Turkey.

Officials have said the five gunmen and suicide bombers who were killed had fought in Syria and Iraq, where Daesh once held swathes of territory but is now in decline.

Iran was the first country rushing to Iraq’s assistance in 2014, when it came under the Daesh invasion, providing the Arab country as well as Syria with military advisory support at the request of their governments.

The Takfiri group was defeated in the Arab countries late last year but has named Iran as the potential target of its acts of terrorism.