IOC Refuses to Ban Iran Following Athlete’s Execution

Navid Afkari, a 27 year-old champion Greco-Roman wrestler and Olympic prospect, was executed in Iran on September 12. Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), called on by international athlete associations to oust Iran from the upcoming Tokyo Games, expressed shock, but he refused to consider sanctions at the next Executive Board video conference on October 7. The IOC found no legal grounds in its charter to ban Iran, concluding that banning the country from competing would punish athletes rather than governments and that the execution was unrelated to a sporting event.

Afkari participated in 2018 demonstrations in his hometown of Shiraz during the nationwide protests against economic and social policies that drew thousands of young Iranians. His arrest on September 17, 2018 carried two charges: murder of a security guard and creating a public panic. Human Rights Watch calls Afkari’s arrest politically motivated, describing the closed door trial as an arbitrary sham with no witnesses, and the only evidence a confession extracted during fifty days of torture. Anti-regime activists say singling out a popular athlete is an unambiguous warning to the 60 percent of the population under 30 years old: "Try to overthrow our regime and we will kill you." The U.N. High Commission for Human Rights mirrors this claim, stating, “It is deeply disturbing that the authorities used the death penalty against an athlete as a warning to its population in a climate of social unrest.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, denies the political motivation.

"We have an independent judiciary and the government is not involved in the decision-making of the judiciary,” he argued to the Council on Foreign Relations two weeks ago. “This gentleman was executed not because of participation in the demonstrations but because of a murder. Many people participate in demonstrations and none of them are executed.” Jailing and torture of protesters has been widely reported. In the last bout of mass demonstrations in November 2019, 7,000 Iranians, mostly ages 19 to 26, were arrested and detained, in addition to 180–450 killed by security forces on the spot.

In a recording smuggled from prison in August and passed to social media, Afkari reportedly responded to rejection of his retrial request, “The Islamic Republic of Iran is about to execute an innocent person like me. They’ve shut down my voice and they’re now about to take my life.” "When I asked the judge where the evidence was that I was a murderer, he replied: 'This is not Switzerland, boy.’"

The IOC says the details of its Olympic Charter prevent a ban on Iran. Specifically, it can only sanction National Olympic Committees (NOC)—not governments—and Iran’s NOC insists it lived up to its commitment to “take action against discrimination and violence in sport” by asking Tehran for clemency. Legal experts, however, refer to the Charter’s Rule 27.9, which can be interpreted to mean that, in situations where an NOC tried and failed to prevent government persecution of an athlete, the IOC Executive Board can expel the country. The complication remains, however, that persecution was not associated with a sports event and Afkari was not killed because he was an athlete.

The IOC is understandably in a legal bind over Afkari. But critics say its past failure to ban Iran’s NOC for breaches of its charter has now come back to haunt it. Iran regularly bars women spectators from venues and, in a case which resulted in sanctions from the World Judo Federation, the IOC did nothing to oppose Iran’s refusal to allow its athletes to compete against Israelis.