Iran hangs man convicted of killing clerics in April attack

Iran on Monday morning hanged a man convicted of killing two clerics in a stabbing attack in April at a revered Shiite shrine, the country’s state television reported.

The report says the death penalty was carried out by hanging after the country’s Supreme Court upheld a verdict issued earlier by a Revolutionary Court in northeastern city of Mashhad, the place of the attack.

The convicted man was identified as Abdollatif Moradi and authorities said he had stabbed three clerics. Two died, one instantly, the other later in a hospital. No further details were available following the attack at the city’s Imam Reza shrine, a rare act of violence at the major pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims.

However, Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency said Moradi was an Uzbek national who had entered Iran illegally through Pakistan a year ago.

The police have not offered a motive for the stabbing. The country’s interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, at the time described it as a “terrorist attack” and vowed Iran would pursue the perpetrators and all “takfiris,” a term used for Sunni extremists who consider other Muslims infidels.

Four other suspects were arrested on charges of collaboration in the attack.