Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani. Photo: screenshot.

Regarding the execution of Jewish Iranian citizen Arvin Ghahremani, the Associated Press wholeheartedly embraces the dubious narrative of the Islamic regime’s judiciary. While selling its wares on the mantra of “Advancing the power of facts,” the leading news service conceals the harrowing basic facts from readers — that the young man’s family insisted that he was defending himself from his attacker, and that the Iran Human Rights advocacy group slammed the legal case’s “significant flaws.”

The AP’s Nov. 4 coverage ignored the case’s glaring problems, and hewed closely to the line espoused from a website affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, starting with a headline that frames Ghahremani’s act as motivated by nothing more than money, as opposed to self-preservation: “Iran executes a Jewish citizen convicted of murder following a dispute over money.”

With no byline and a dateline of Tehran, the AP’s article begins:

According to the report, Ghahramani attacked the victim outside a gym in Kermanshah in 2022 and stabbed the man several times following a dispute over money he had loaned the victim.

“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jewish citizen,” said IHR [Iran Human Rights] director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding the legal case had “significant flaws.”

“However, in addition to this, Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalised anti-Semitism in the Islamic republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the execution of his sentence,” Amiry-Moghaddam added. 

IHR said that Ghahremani was accused of killing a man during a street fight in Kermanshah two years ago. But it said that, according to his family, he had been attacked with a knife and defended himself using the attacker’s weapon.

Unlike AFP, the Associated Press story contained no mention of the claim of self-defense, nothing about IHR’s statement about “significant flaws” in the case, not a word about Amiry-Moghaddam’s charge that “institutionalized antisemitism … undoubtedly played a crucial role” in the ruling, and no hint of the backdrop of Iran’s attacks on Israel and its ongoing threats to wipe the Jewish State off the face of the earth.

Furthermore, AFP included additional essential information, raising further questions about the Iranian judiciary’s version of events which the AP shared without challenge:

The defendant’s lawyers requested a retrial three times, but each request was rejected, it added.

Mizan said that Ghahremani was 21 at the time of the fight. However IHR said he was 18 then, with other reports saying he was 20 or 21 by the time of his execution.

Moreover, the AP’s selective reporting omitted a clear indication that antisemitism played a key role in Ghahremani’s execution. Thus, the AP story noted the “the convicted man’s lawyers and relatives had failed to convince the victim’s family to abstain from qisas — an act under Islamic penal code that calls for similar punishment, or an ‘eye for an eye’ — and effectively pardon his killer.”

But, according to the Iran Human Rights NGO, Shokri’s family had initially agreed to pardon Ghahremani — that is, until they learned that Ghahremani was Jewish. Thus, IHR reported:

An informed source told IHRNGO: “Arvin’s religion was initially cited as Shia Muslim in the case and the victim’s family agreed to accept diya but changed their mind and insisted on his execution when they discovered that he was Jewish.”

Finally, on Nov. 6, Voice of America (VOA) revealed additional red flags indicating that there’s more to the story than the laundered Mizan-Iranian judiciary-AP version lets on (“New details emerge in Iran’s first execution of Jewish minority member in 30 years“):

VOA has learned that Arvin Ghahremani, the first Jewish person executed by the Islamic Republic in 30 years, was put to death in the western city of Kermanshah on Monday without prior notice to his family. …

A U.S.-based source with contacts in Iran sent VOA the text of a letter that Ghahremani’s Iranian lawyer, Peyman Saketkhou, wrote on Tuesday and stated that Ghahremani had been executed without notice to family members or defense lawyers. …

The source requested anonymity to safeguard communications with Iran-based lawyers, whose work on cases dealing with sensitive issues has exposed them to harassment and arrest by Iranian authorities.

“The execution of Ghahremani without notice to the family shows the cruelty of the regime,” George Haroonian, an Iranian American rights activist, said in a statement to VOA.

According to VOA:

Another Iran-based rights group, Human Rights Activists in Iran, reacted to Ghahremani’s execution by noting that under Iranian law, when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, qisas does not give the non-Muslim’s family the right to seek the offender’s execution. It said that in such cases, only blood money or lesser punishments typically are imposed.

Finally, VOA included a reaction from the US government:

The Biden administration issued its first reaction to Ghahremani’s execution on Wednesday.

“We are dismayed by reports that the regime in Iran executed Arvin Ghahramani. The circumstances of the case and the prosecution raise troubling questions about due process,” U.S. special envoy Deborah Liptstadt said in a post on the X platform.

Meanwhile, while CAMERA contacted the AP about the gross failings of wire service’s Nov. 4 article the very same day it was published, the news agency has neither improved its initial story nor published a follow up with the developments noted by Voice of America.

“Advancing the power of facts” is the AP’s promise to readers, and concealing the troubling questions about due process in the horrific execution of Arvin Ghahremani is the reality.

Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website.