Iran hangs three men over 2019 bombing attacks

Iran hanged on Monday three men who were convicted of carrying out 2019 bombing attacks in the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, the judiciary said.

The three men were sentenced to death after they were found guilty of bombing attacks targeting a police station and a patrol vehicle in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, in 2019.

"The sentences against the perpetrators of bombings in Zahedan were carried out today," the judiciary's Mizan Online website quoted the province's chief justice Ali Mostafavinia as saying.

Mostafavinia said the defendants were also convicted over "receiving military training, transferring and hiding bomb-making materials".

They were also found guilty of being part of the Sunni jihadist Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) group, which was formed in 2012 and is blacklisted by Iran as a "terrorist" organisation, according to Mizan.

Iran executes more people per year than any other nation except China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.

More than 600 people have been executed by Iran so far this year, already the highest figure in eight years, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group in a November report.

Unrest in Iran's impoverished Sistan-Baluchistan province, on the border with Pakistan, has over the years involved drugs-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremist groups.

On Monday, Iran's official IRNA news agency said a conscript was killed and two others injured in a confrontation with an armed group near the border with Pakistan.

In September, gunmen carried out an attack in the province killing two policemen.

And in July, four policemen were killed while on patrol.

Earlier that month, two policemen and four assailants were killed in a grenade and gun battle in the province during an attack later claimed by Jaish al-Adl.

Zahedan was also the scene of protests that flared in September 2022, when dozens of people died during the demonstrations over the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police officer.