Iran sentences X user to death over posts, lawyer says

Iran's judiciary has sentenced Amirhossein Mousavi to death over posts on X and other social media, his lawyer and several rights groups said.

Mousavi, 40, posted anonymously on X and Instagram under accounts named James Bi Din, meaning James without faith in Persian, or James B. Dean. His lawyer Reza Shafakhah wrote on X that Mousavi was convicted of the capital charge of "corruption on earth" in connection with online activity on the Twitter account "James B. Dean".

The account on X, formerly Twitter, was known as @james_bidin and has since been suspended. Mousavi was arrested at a Tehran airport in December 2024 while leaving for the Iranian Gulf island of Kish.

Norway-based Iran Human Rights said the conviction was over Mousavi's "online dissent" against the authorities. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency also confirmed the sentence and said the trial was presided over by judge Abolghasem Salavati.

Iran Human Rights said Mousavi was shown on Iranian state television in October 2025 making confessions in a segment that accused him of acting as an Israeli agent to incite protests during nationwide demonstrations in 2022. The group said Mousavi later retracted the comments and said his confessions were tainted by torture.

Rights activists accuse Iranian authorities of using torture to extract forced confessions from detainees and then broadcasting them on television.

Iran has executed 36 men over the January 2026 protests. Since war broke out with the United States and Israel, it has also executed two other men over the 2022 protests.