A Jewish prisoner in Iran could be executed as soon as Monday, terrifying the Islamic Republic's tiny, vulnerable Jewish community.
The case has also raised an alarm among Iranian Jewish expats and others in the New York Jewish community, who view it as a miscarriage of justice that could soon threaten others.
According to court papers translated for the New York Post , the prisoner, 20-year-old Arvin Ghahremani, was accosted in an Iranian city by seven men, including one who owed him money, he told authorities.
Ghahremani said that man stabbed him with a knife, and Gahremani killed him as he defended himself, he explained to investigators.
Ghahremani was convicted of being an "accomplice to the intentional murder of a Muslim," and sentenced to death. The execution could be halted if he reaches a financial settlement with the victim's family.
"This has gotten everybody very nervous in Iran," Rabbi Dany Yiftach, who translated the court records, told the Post.
The Jewish representative in Iran's Parliament has reportedly pleaded in vain with multiple Muslim lawmakers to mediate the case.
Yiftach believes the case would have gone differently in Tehran instead of 500 miles away in another city where Ghahremani was arrested.
"I'm confident that if this case would have been in Tehran it wouldn't have turned out this way because I do believe in the goodwill of the central government," the rabbi told the Post.
Jews are a minuscule minority in the Islamic Republic, numbering just 8,000 out of 88.5 million Iranians.
