Judicial Official: Indictments Issued for 26 People in Connection with Zahedan’s Bloody Friday
Ahmad Reza Pourkhaqan, head of the judicial organization of the armed forces, announced the issuance of indictments for 26 people in connection with the events known as “Bloody Friday” in Zahedan.
In those events, which occurred after the Friday prayer on the 8th of Mehr last year, at least one hundred Baloch citizens were killed as a result of direct fire from security forces.
Previously, the news website “Halash,” which covers news related to Sistan and Baluchestan, had confirmed the identities of at least 121 people in its report on the number of deaths in the Zahedan and Khash protests on “Bloody Friday.”
Mr. Pourkhaqan said on Thursday, the 21st of Ordibehesht, during a visit to Zahedan about the indictments issued: 11 people have been charged with shooting that led to murder and injury, and 15 others, including abuse of their position and unauthorized shooting, have been charged.
Following the events of Bloody Friday, worshippers in the city of Zahedan have taken to the streets every week after Friday prayers and chanted slogans against the government.
Additionally, Mawlawi Abdolhamid, the Sunni Friday prayer imam of Zahedan, has repeatedly called in his speeches for the perpetrators of this massacre to be prosecuted.
In Zahedan’s “Bloody Friday,” protesters were forming a protest gathering in response to the “assault” of a police commander on a Baloch girl, when they were directly targeted by police gunfire and dozens of them were killed.
Mawlawi Abdolhamid has emphasized that the security forces of the Islamic Republic used “military ammunition” to suppress the protesters.
Amnesty International also stated in a statement that the government forces of the Islamic Republic, using a “deadly pattern” in suppressing protests in Sistan and Baluchestan, used “deadly military ammunition and bullets” against the people of this province and “targeted the upper bodies, chests, and heads of protesters with the intent to kill.”
In mid-Azar of last year, an audio file from a meeting of the “Islamic Revolution Coalition Forces Council” headed by Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel was released, in which the secretary of this council admits to a “grave mistake” by the security forces of the Islamic Republic in the massacre of Zahedan residents during the city’s “Bloody Friday.”
Reza Davari, secretary of the Islamic Revolution Coalition Forces Council, said in this meeting: “The person who was above the police station and fired made a grave mistake and targeted an area where a number of people, including women, men, and teenagers, were killed.”
The issuance of indictments for 26 people in connection with this massacre comes as Mawlawi Abdolhamid has rejected reducing this massacre to a personal mistake by the officials.
He said on the 30th of Azar of last year that the shooting and massacre of protesters on Zahedan’s Bloody Friday was “a predetermined plan.”
Source: Radio Farda
