Iran executes Kurdish Islamists for armed attacks
DUBAI - Iran executed up to 20 Kurdish Islamists suspected of attacks on security forces, drawing condemnation from rights groups which said the convictions may have been based on forced confessions.
State news agency IRNA said members of the Tawhid and Jihad group were executed on Tuesday, but did not give a figure. Rights groups said between 10 and 20 people were killed.
They were convicted of killing two Sunni Muslim clerics, several police and wildlife guards, abducting a number of people and carrying out armed robbery and bombings in Western Iran, IRNA said.
Iranian state television broadcast what it said were the confessions of some members of the Sunni Muslim group, in which they said they targeted both Shi'ite and Sunni clerics whose ideologies they regarded as heresy.
