Iran executes a man accused of the 2023 shooting at the Azerbaijani embassy.
Iran executed the man found guilty of the 2023 attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran on Wednesday, according to the official news agency of the judiciary, Mizan.
Armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, the assailant, who went under the name Yasin Hoseinzadeh, broke into the embassy in January 2023.
According to APA, he broke inside the guard station. He started shooting, killing Orkhan Asgarov, the chief of the embassy’s security department, and wounding Vasif Taghiyev and Mahir Imanov, who attempted to halt the assault.
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan at the time, denounced the attack on social media as a “terrorist act” and “unacceptable.”
According to Iranian police, the attacker’s refusal to see him because he thought his wife was inside the embassy was motivated by personal reasons.
He received a death sentence for disturbing public order, unlawful firearm possession, and murder. The sentence was executed on Wednesday morning after the Supreme Court upheld the decision.
Azerbaijan’s embassy operations in Iran were suspended due to the incident. Following discussions between the two nations, diplomatic personnel and their families were evacuated soon after the incident, and the mission didn’t start up again until July of last year at a different location.
Tehran has voiced concerns about Baku’s close links to Israel and potential regional boundary movements in the wake of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, while Azerbaijan has accused Iran of mistreating its ethnic Azeri people. The two neighbors have had contentious relations.
