TEHRAN, Iran — On Monday, Iran carried out the execution of a Jewish individual who was found guilty of committing murder during a personal altercation in 2022. This incident marks a rare occurrence of capital punishment being enforced on a member of a religious minority in the predominantly Muslim nation.

The Iranian judiciary-affiliated website, Mizanonline.ir, reported that Arvin Ghahremani, a 23-year-old man, was executed after the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence, which had been imposed the previous year. Hamid Reza Karimi, the prosecutor in Kermanshah, mentioned that both the court and the defense team failed to persuade the family of the deceased to forgo qisas, an Islamic legal principle that allows for retributive justice or “an eye for an eye,” and to grant clemency to the convicted man instead.

Details regarding the victim have not been disclosed. Reports indicate that Ghahremani confronted the victim outside a gym in Kermanshah over a money-related dispute, culminating in the stabbing incident.

In Iran, the Jewish community represents a small fraction of the population, which totals around 85 million. Historical tensions were highlighted in 1999 when the Iranian government detained 13 Jewish individuals on charges related to espionage for Israel, sentencing several of them to prison terms of up to four years.

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, many members of the Jewish community fled Iran, and current estimates suggest that about 20,000 Jews continue to reside in the country. The majority of Iran’s population is made up of Shiite Muslims, with the country’s leadership largely consisting of hard-line clerics who advocate for a stringent interpretation of Islamic law.