Senior Iranian ‘death committee’ judge dies

A high-ranking Iranian judge and member of the so-called Death Committee which oversaw the execution of thousands of dissidents in the late 1980s, has died.

The head or Iran's judiciary issued a condolence message on Thursday saying Hossein Ali Nayeri had been bedridden due to a lengthy illness, attributing the sickness to his years of work.

"Certainly, this ailment was due to many years of service to the holy system of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the judiciary," Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the judiciary's Mizan news agency.

Nayeri's death comes after a court employee in January shot dead two veteran Supreme Court judges, Mohammad Moghiseh and AliRazini, before killing himself. Initial news reports at the time mentioned a third judge being injured but officials said an injured bodyguard was the only other victim.

Born in 1956, Hossein Ali Nayeri served as the religious judge of Tehran's Evin Prison from 1983 to 1989 and was appointed by the founder of the Islamic Republic Ruhollah Khomeini.

During this period authorities routinely executed political prisoners. Nayeri was a key member of a judicial panel - later known as the "Death Committee" - which condemned thousands of prisoners to death in the summer of 1988.

Following his tenure at Evin Prison, Nayeri served as the Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1989 to 2013 and as the head of the Judges Disciplinary Court from 2013 to 2022.

On Wednesday, a hacktivist group said the Iranian police intelligence agency has issued thousands of gun permits to senior state officials to fend off assassination.