cnn
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Two veteran judges of the Iranian Supreme Court, known for handling high-profile cases, were shot dead in Tehran by an assailant who later took his own life.
The Judiciary’s media office was quoted by state-affiliated media as saying the attacker had no pending legal cases. Details of the incident remain unclear, but the Iranian judiciary said the gunman killed the two senior judges in a “planned homicide” inside the court and attempted to flee before taking his own life.
One guard was injured in the attack, Judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said, according to the Mizan News Agency.
Mohammad Moghiseh and Ali Razini were veteran judges who for decades led courts involved in the trial of protesters, artists and activists.
Moghiseh was sanctioned by the United States in 2019 for overseeing “countless unfair trials, during which charges were unfounded and evidence was ignored.” It was sanctioned by the European Union eight years earlier.
In one case alone, he sentenced eight Iranian Facebook users to a total of 127 years in prison for anti-regime advertising and insults to religion. It had also tried filmmakers and poets for “propaganda against the state,” the US Treasury Department said.
In another case in 2019, he sentenced prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and women’s rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes, according to Amnesty International.
In 1999, Razini survived an assassination attempt after a bomb was placed in his vehicle, Iran’s Fars news agency said. Along with former president Ebrahim Raisi, he is accused of being one of the judges involved in the “Death Commission,” a committee that oversaw the persecution and execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
