In recent days the death sentences were carried out in Iran against two demonstrators who were arrested for protesting against the Iranian regime. The two, Mohsen Shekari and Majid Reza Rahnavard, were 23 years old and were killed by hanging because they were accused of the crime of moharebeh, which in Farsi (the Iranian language) roughly means “to wage war against God”, or “enmity against God”. The moharebeh is one of the crimes that the Iranian regime has used for decades to maintain authoritarian control over the population, and to inflict disproportionate penalties for infringements dangerous to political stability.
According to the human rights group Iran Human Rightsthe Iranian regime has carried out more than 500 death sentences since the beginning of the year, many of them for the crime of moharebeh.
Both Mohsen Shekari and Majid Reza Rahnavard had been accused of having injured and killed some policemen, even if the trial they undergo was considered a farcical one, and it seems that the confessions of the two defendants were coerced with violence. But the crime of moharebeh also applies in exceptionally less serious circumstances, such as for acts of vandalism, against those who participate in protest demonstrations, or against those who publish articles critical of the regime.
The moharebeh is foreseen by the sharia, that is in the Islamic religious law: moharebeh is a word in Farsi, whose equivalent in Arabic is hirabah. Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has been a mixed judicial regime, in the sense that it does not fully adopt sharia law but retains some aspects of the western legal system and courts, in which however sharia law is heavily enforced and guarantees against defendants they are often more formal than anything else, especially in cases of political offences.
On the moharebeh/hirabah the doctrinal discussion in the Islamic world is very broad and secular, but the central point of the moharebeh as understood in Iranian justice is that, although it is translated as “to wage war against God”, it is not a religious crime, or a crime of blasphemy, but it is a crime against the established order, which the Iranian regime uses extensively against any kind of disobedience.
Moharebeh is stipulated in Article 279 of the Islamic Penal Code (the Penal Code of Iran) and is defined as: “Using a weapon against the life, property or chastity of persons or causing terror that creates an atmosphere of insecurity” . Even according to this definition, moharebeh is an exceptionally broad and vague crime. Furthermore, Iranian jurisprudence has further broadened its meaning because “making war on God” is often interpreted as “opposing the order of things willed by God”, which obviously in the eyes of the Iranian regime is the state itself.
In this sense, moharebeh is a crime not against the person (it does not apply, for example, in common homicides) but against God and against the established order. This is why it is applied in Iran against crimes that can affect the stability of the regime itself: not only the demonstrators of recent months, but also political activists, ethnic minorities, Sunni Muslims (the Iranian regime is dominated by the Shiite clergy and the country is Shiite majority).
Thanks to this enormous vagueness, the moharebeh has been a powerful tool of control for decades. Potentially, it is possible to argue that “an atmosphere of insecurity” is also created by blocking a road during a demonstration: and it is indeed one of the charges against Mohsen Shekari, one of the two demonstrators hanged in recent days.
According to the Islamic penal code, the penalties for the moharebeh can be “death, crucifixion, amputation of the right hand and left leg and exile”. However, courts often impose a wide variety of penalties, depending on the interpretation of the judge, who has considerable discretion.
