Hussein, Muhammadi, actor and stage director; one of the five people who were sentenced to death in the case of the killing of a Basij member at the 40th death-day ceremony of Hadith Najafi (one of the victims in the protests after the state-murder of Mahsa Amini), was issued on Apr. 29, 2023, along with the other two defendants. According to “Dideban-eh Iran” news website, Judge Asaf Al-Hosseini has issued the sentence of these three defendants as follows: Reza Aria, ten years of imprisonment in exile in Kerman; Mehdi Mohammadi, ten years of imprisonment in exile; Hossein Mohammadi, ten years of imprisonment in exile. Issuing the rulings of mandated exile means that the “illegal” charge of “war-waging” or “belligerence,” and “corruption on earth” has not been removed from among the charges of these defendants because the exile punishment is within the scope of the charges mentioned above. These verdicts can be appealed in the Supreme Court. According to Article 279 of the Islamic Penalty Code, the condition for the crime of war-waging” or “belligerence” is the use of weapons with the intention of creating insecurity and intimidate and engender fear among people. Therefore, provided that weapons have not been used or there has been no threat of security and creation of fear in the public, such crime has not been committed. Since these defendants did not use weapons, it is completely illegal to assign the charge of war against them, and the issuance and execution of death sentences for them based on such illegal charge, amounts to “intentional murder”.
Earlier in the reports, it was stated that the name of Hossein Mohammadi was abruptly and with no prior explanation added to the defendants of this case on the third session held in the first branch of the Revolutionary Court of Alborz province. Before this meeting, there was no mention of his presence as a defendant in this case, and his name was suddenly added to the list of defendants in this case without any explanation. The number of people who were introduced as defendants in this case by the judicial authorities of the Islamic Republic was initially 11 and then reached to 15 people, and on the third day, by adding Hossein Mohammadi’s name, the number of the people charged increased to 16. The prosecutor’s representative in the court accused Hossein Mohammadi of “corruption on earth by committing crimes against national security,” “conspiracy and collusion with the intention of committing crimes against national security.” On Jan. 3, 2022, Amir Hashemi, the PR manager of the Supreme Court, announced on his Twitter account that the death sentences of Mohammad Mahdi Karmi and Mohammad Hosseini, one of the defendants, in the case of the homicide of Ruhollah Ajamian, a basiji militia killed while suppressing the mass protests] have been confirmed by the court. While announcing this news, Hashemi wrote that the death sentences issued for Hamid Qarahasanlou, Hossein Mohammadi and Reza Aria were violated “due to defects in the investigation.”
Before the announcement of the death sentence for Hossein Mohammadi, a large number of theatre artists were seen among those detained during the recent protests. In the first weeks of the protests, a list of more than 20 arrested theatre artists was published, and later, unofficial reports mentioned the continued arrest of the same people and even more theatre artists. On Dec. 15, 2022, Mohammad Mahdi Asgarpour, the chairman of the board of directors of Cinema House, announced in an interview with ISNA news agency, based in Iran, that the number of detainees in various fields of art, except cinema, had reached more than a hundred individuals by that date. However, amidst all these news, the death sentence for Hossein Mohammadi, a young stage actor, shocked the Iranian theatre community. At the same time, Hossein Mohammadi is a respected name among young performing arts activists as well as a number of well-known figures in this field. According to the reports of Hossein Mohammadi’s relatives, the actor was arrested at noon on Nov. 14, 2022 at his own place, and on the evening of the arrest day, through a phone call made by him with his family, he spoke about what he called “clarifying the misunderstanding” for the next two or three days. Therefore, neither he himself nor any member of his family, friends and colleagues expected his name being mentioned at a court related to the homicide case of a Basij militia in plain clothes.
Hossein Mohammadi was born on Feb. 12 1997 in Karaj. As a young artist, in 2020, he won the prize of the best male actor in Creative Academic Festival for starring in a play called “Chehel Lom,” which was taken on the stage on Oct.-Nov. 2019, in one of the theatre halls of the capital. In addition, on the 49th closing ceremony of the state art festival, Fajr, he was present for starring in a play directed by Maryam Khalili, called “from 7:30 to 9:00”, and was praised with the highest rank in the Unique Performers’ category. It must be added that Katalin Gennburg had accepted his political guardianship to prevent his execution sentence. In any case, on his birthday, his partner recently posted his phone message from prison on the same occasion where this young artist in prison recites a poem by the 20-century Swedish poet, Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by the prominent Iranian modernist poet, Bijhan Elahi, which reads: “in fall or spring / what difference does it make? / When young or as old / what significance it holds? / You vanish in any case / as a whole / disappeared you are, all gone / Right now, or an instance ago / or a thousand years ago, if you will / yet what lasts / is your disappearance.” He then addresses his friends and loved ones gathering for his birthday around the speaker, listening, and adds: “I make a wish, a loud wish, we all disappear anyway; but I wish the disappearance of us all be eternal, immortal, and we remain at the heart of history, and those from future say our names, in honor, this is all I struggle for in my life, and I make the same wish for all of you, too, to be enteral, to be immortal, that disappearing…well…it is quite natural, we all come to this world one day and one day depart from it, but the beauty lies in being eternal…”
