The Jewish community in Iran is still shocked by the execution last week of Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani. The 20-year-old Jewish man from Kermanshah was executed after being accused of murdering a Muslim man who attacked him with a knife.
Ghahremani tried to defend himself, fatally injuring his attacker in the struggle. He eventually died of his injuries.
Ghahremani was executed despite international appeals from his family and Iran’s Jewish community, as well as global efforts to sweeten the sentence.
The incident occurred in November 2022, when Ghahremani was training at a gym in Kermanshah, located in western Iran on the border with Iraq. During training, he met seven men, including 40-year-old Amir Shukri, who owed him money.
According to Ghahremani's family, Shukri pulled out a knife and tried to stab him. Ghahremani fought back to defend himself, managed to snatch the knife out of Shukri's hands and fatally stab him. Shukri was later pronounced dead.
An Iranian court convicted Ghahremani of "participation in the deliberate murder of a Muslim" and sentenced him to death. The family's attempts to pay a ransom to Shukri's family to cancel the sentence, as is customary in Iran, were met with complete refusal. Ghahremani was later executed.
Now the family and the Jewish community in Kermanshah are shedding light on what happened. Sources in the Jewish community in the city where Ghahremani lived said that the execution could have been avoided if the representative of the Jewish community in the Iranian parliament, Dr. Homayoun Sameh, had helped right from the start, "and not done us a favor at the last minute."
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Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani was executed for the murder of a Muslim man who attacked him with a knife
Other Jewish community sources in Iran have voiced even harsher criticism of Sameh. "When he makes mistakes, he rushes to attack Israel in order to divert criticism away from himself. He is constantly busy with PR, he likes to be interviewed by the Iranian media, and the only thing he does is attack Israel to deflect criticism from himself for doing nothing."
The sources also said that at first, "he didn't want to get involved at all, and after there was pressure on him from the community and the family, it was already too late. He is evil. He is wicked evil. He only does things that make him look good. What is he our representative for? To be interviewed by IRNA? Nathaniel's blood is on his hands."
Another Jewish community source added "Six months ago, when they asked him in synagogue to intervene and do something for Nathaniel, he said, 'Don't forget that he murdered someone.' When he was told that Nathaniel was defending himself, Sameh responded, 'It's his problem.'"
Community outrage is mounting, largely due to the belief that Sameh could have intervened sooner, instead of waiting until the young Jewish man was convicted and executed.
"Had he acted quietly at the very beginning, no one would have known or heard about it, and Nathaniel would have been released after paying a ransom to the family," said another community member. "But he didn't do anything, and only when there was great pressure on him, he started to act. He went to the home of the family of the victim, but because the whole neighborhood there knew about the story, the family did not want to accept the compromise he tried to offer and refused to see him at all. He betrayed Nathaniel's family, may God punish him for his actions."
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