Two senior Iranian judges were shot dead in the country’s Supreme Court, state media reported.
Justice website Mizan reported that judges Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh were killed after a gunman entered the court in the capital Tehran on Saturday morning.
It is said that the attackers then killed themselves while fleeing the scene. A bodyguard was also allegedly injured in the attack.
The motive for the attack is unclear, but both judges are said to have played a role in the persecution and killing of opponents of the Islamic regime in the 1980s and 1990s.
In a statement to state news agency IRNA, the judiciary’s media office described the attack as a premeditated assassination.
It also said that according to initial findings, the attacker was not involved in any case pending before the Supreme Court, and an investigation was launched to identify and arrest any other persons who may have been involved in the attack.
A spokesman for the judiciary, Asghar Jahangir, told Iranian state TV that the gunman entered the court with a gun before opening fire.
One of the judges, Razini, survived an assassination attempt in 1998.
The other, Moghiseh, was sanctioned by the USA in 2019with the Ministry of Finance accusing him of “overseeing countless unfair trials, during which the charges remained unfounded and the evidence was ignored”.
At that time he was a judge of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. He was reportedly appointed to the Supreme Court in 2020.
Moghiseh was also among seven Iranian judges sanctioned by Canada in 2023 for what the country described as “their role in gross and systematic human rights violations.”
