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More than two dozen Olympic champions, mentors and additional international athletes have put their names to a statement urging a end to the execution of a boxing champion and trainer, who is on death row in the nation.

Increasing Global Anger

Amidst growing global condemnation over the country's increasing application of capital punishment as a means of suppression, the forcefully phrased statement condemns the government's ruling to uphold the capital punishment of the athlete.

The athlete, three decades old, from the city in the northeastern region, was taken into custody for being involved in countrywide demonstrations in two thousand nineteen and charged of backing an resistance movement. He has spent five years in prison, where he has been tortured and kept in isolation.

“Sport is designed to inspire optimism, solidarity, and fortitude,” the signatories stated. “The death penalty of a winner for his political views is a direct assault on these values and a admonition to all sportspeople who dares to express dissent.

Record of Executing Competitors

The appeal noted that Vafaei Sani’s circumstances was not an isolated one and underscored the country's history of sentencing to death competitors for their convictions, including Habib Khabiri, leader of the soccer squad, and Fourouzan Abdi, skipper of the national women’s volleyball team. In two thousand twenty, an athlete, a 27-year-old national competitor, was put to death.

Other signatories to the statement include a yachting pioneer, who led the first all-female crew in a round-the-world competition and was the pioneering lady to earn a renowned yachting trophy; the previous skipper of the Australian football team Craig Foster; and a footballer, who was in the country's selection for the international competition.

Arrest and Unjust Proceedings

Vafaei Sani was arrested in March 2020. The charges against him comprised “causing deterioration on Earth through incendiarism and damage of government belongings”. His verdict has been annulled multiple times but on the fourth of October it was upheld on the third occasion. His trial was condemned as “grossly unfair” by rights defenders and groups.

Appeal to UN

The appeal to stop the athlete's capital punishment is subsequent to a earlier letter to the UN high commissioner for freedoms, backed by in excess of a hundred human rights experts and organizations, demanding action to avert the sports figure's execution.

Execution Crisis

Based on reports, there is an “death penalty surge in the nation, which has achieved alarming dimensions”. In the year 2023, officials sentenced at least eight hundred fifty-three people – a forty-eight percent rise on 2022. Last year, data showed nearly a thousand capital punishments, constituting the peak figure since 2015. More than 800 people have been executed so far in 2025.

Dissidents and protesters are focus, particularly in the wake of the the year 2022 demonstrations. Analysts say the government have employed the death penalty to suppress dissent, generate fear among the citizenry and reinforce their control on rule.