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Two Iranian Supreme Court Judges Assassinated

In a rare shooting in downtown Tehran, two prominent judges from the country’s Supreme Court have been killed and another wounded, according to Iranian state media reports.

Little information was released about the attacker, but at least one of the judges killed was known to handle death penalty cases for activists and opposition members.

Violent attacks like this shooting are uncommon in Iran, a country where the arms of state security maintain tight control of society. Footage from outside the Supreme Court building on Saturday showed security forces filling the street and yellow police tape cordoning off the area.

“At 10 a.m. this morning an individual entered the room of the judges of judiciary with a pistol and targeted the superior judges,” said Asghar Jahangir, the spokesman for Iran’s judiciary. Jahangir read from a written statement during a state television broadcast Saturday.

Little information was released about the attacker, who shot himself before he could be apprehended, according to the state media reports. One report stated that the attacker was not connected to any of the cases being heard at the court Saturday.

The two judges killed were identified as Mohammad Moghiseh and Ali Razini, both men who have served in Iran’s judicial system for decades. The judiciary spokesman identified the judges as “brave and experienced” men who “had crucial responsibilities in the jurisdiction investigating security cases.”

The judiciary said both men had previously been targeted due to their work in the justice system. The judges had “been targeted by the enemies of Islam and the Islamic Republic because of their precious services in sensitive cases,” Jahangir said.

Razini had been targeted in an attack in 1999, according to Jahangir, after which he was visited in the hospital by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And Moghiseh, the other judge killed, had held a number of other high-profile positions including as assistant prosecutor in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, the prison supervisor of two other detention facilities and the head of a court that handled female dress-code violations, according to Tejarat, an Iranian newspaper.

In 2019 Moghiseh was placed under sanctions along with another judge by the United States for penalizing Iranians for exercising freedoms of expression and assembly.

“He is notorious for sentencing scores of journalists and internet users to lengthy prison terms. In one case alone, he sentenced eight Iranian Facebook users to a cumulative total of 127 years in prison for charges including anti-regime publicity and insults to religion,” said the U.S. Treasury Department about Moghiseh in the 2019 designation.

It unclear how the attacker on Saturday was able to enter the highly fortified area. Iran’s Supreme Court is in central Tehran, just blocks away from the Grand Bazaar and government palaces.

While these kinds of attacks are rare, Iran has seen a number of shootings targeting prominent individuals in the past year. In September, October and December there were shootings targeting Friday prayer imams in different parts of the country.

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