Despite Alleged ‘Significant Flaws,’ AP Shills For Iranian Executioners of Jewish Citizen

By: Tamar Sternthal November 10, 2024
Regarding the execution of Jewish Iranian citizen Arvin Ghahremani, the Associated Press wholeheartedly embraces the dubious narrative of the Islamic regime’s judiciary. While selling its wares on the mantra of “Advancing the power of facts,” the leading news service conceals the harrowing basic facts from readers: the young man’s family had insisted that he was defending himself from his attacker and Iran Human Rights slammed the legal case’ “significant flaws.”

“Significant flaws” were cited regarding the conviction of Arvin Ghahremani, none cited by AP (Photo from social media)

AP’s Nov. 4 coverage ignores the case’s glaring problems and hews closely to the line espoused from a website affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, starting with the headline which frames Ghahremani’s act as motivated by nothing more than money as opposed to self-preservation: “Iran executes a Jewish citizen convicted of murder following a dispute over money“.
With no byline and a dateline of Tehran, AP’s article begins:

Iran on Monday executed a Jewish citizen convicted of murdering another man in 2022 following a personal dispute, reports said. It was a rare case of an execution of member of a religious minority in the predominately Muslim nation.

Mizanonline.ir, a website affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said 23-year-old Arvin Ghahremani was put to death after the country’s Supreme Court affirmed the capital punishment handed down in the case earlier last year. …

According to the report, Ghahramani attacked the victim outside a gym in Kermanshah in 2022 and stabbed the man several times following a dispute over money he had loaned the victim.
At no point does the AP article mention that Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani’s family maintains that the deceased Amir Shokri attacked Arvin with a knife and Arvin fought back in self-defense. 
In contrast, reporting from Paris, rival news service Agence France Presse includes highly relevant background and criticism of the case voiced by an Iranian human rights organization (“Iran executes Jewish Iranian man in murder case“):
“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jewish citizen,” said IHR [Iran Human Rights] director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding the legal case had “significant flaws”.

“However, in addition to this, Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalised anti-Semitism in the Islamic republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the execution of his sentence,” Amiry-Moghaddam added.

IHR said that Ghahremani was accused of killing a man during a street fight in Kermanshah two years ago. But it said that, according to his family, he had been attacked with a knife and defended himself using the attacker’s weapon.

Unlike AFP, the Associated Press contains no mention of the claim of self-defense, nothing about IHR’s statement about “significant flaws” in the case, not a word about Amiry-Moghaddam’s charge that “institutionalized antisemitism . . . undoubtedly played a crucial role” in the ruling, and no hint of the backdrop of Iran’s attacks on Israel and its ongoing threats to wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth.

Furthermore, AFP includes additional essential information raising further questions about the Iranian judiciary’s version of events which AP shared without challenge:

The defendant’s lawyers requested a retrial three times, but each request was rejected, it added.

Mizan said that Ghahremani was 21 at the time of the fight. However IHR said he was 18 then, with other reports saying he was 20 or 21 by the time of his execution.

Moreover, AP’s selective reporting omits a clear indication that antisemitism played a key role in Ghahremani’s execution. Thus, the AP story noted the “the convicted man’s lawyers and relatives had failed to convince the victim’s family to abstain from qisas — an act under Islamic penal code that calls for similar punishment, or an ‘eye for an eye’ —and effectively pardon his killer.”

But, according to the Iran Human Rights NGO, Shokri’s family had initially agreed to pardon Ghahremani — that is until they learned that Ghahremani was Jewish. Thus, IHR reported:

An informed source told IHRNGO: “Arvin’s religion was initially cited as Shia Muslim in the case and the victim’s family agreed to accept diya but changed their mind and insisted on his execution when they discovered that he was Jewish.”

Finally, on Nov. 6, Voice of America revealed additional red flags indicating that there’s more to the story than the laundered Mizan-Iranian judiciary-AP version lets on (“New details emerge in Iran’s first execution of Jewish minority member in 30 years“):

VOA has learned that Arvin Ghahremani, the first Jewish person executed by the Islamic Republic in 30 years, was put to death in the western city of Kermanshah on Monday without prior notice to his family. …

A U.S.-based source with contacts in Iran sent VOA the text of a letter that Ghahremani’s Iranian lawyer, Peyman Saketkhou, wrote on Tuesday and stated that Ghahremani had been executed without notice to family members or defense lawyers. …

The source requested anonymity to safeguard communications with Iran-based lawyers, whose work on cases dealing with sensitive issues has exposed them to harassment and arrest by Iranian authorities.

“The execution of Ghahremani without notice to the family shows the cruelty of the regime,” George Haroonian, an Iranian American rights activist, said in a statement to VOA.

According to VOA:

Another Iran-based rights group, Human Rights Activists in Iran, reacted to Ghahremani’s execution by noting that under Iranian law, when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, qisas does not give the non-Muslim’s family the right to seek the offender’s execution. It said that in such cases, only blood money or lesser punishments typically are imposed.

Finally, VOA included a reaction from the U.S. government:

The Biden administration issued its first reaction to Ghahremani’s execution on Wednesday.

“We are dismayed by reports that the regime in Iran executed Arvin Ghahramani. The cirumstances of the case and the prosecution raise troubling questions about due process,” U.S. special envoy Deborah Liptstadt said in a post on the X platform.

Meanwhile, while CAMERA contacted AP about the gross failings of wire service’s Nov. 4 article the very same day it was published, the news agency has neither improved its initial story nor published a follow up with the developments noted by Voice of America.

“Advancing the power of facts” is AP’s promise and concealing the troubling questions about due process in the horrific execution of Arvin Ghahremani is the reality.

 

Comments are closed.