Mohammad Salas, alongside dozens of Gonabadi Dervishes, had participated in the Dervishes’ protests of February 2018 in Tehran’s neighborhood of Golestan-e Haftom.
During the early hours of the clashes on February 19, 2018, many people saw the police and plainclothes security forces brutally beat and arrest Salas in front of a police station in Pasdaran Avenue. They hit Salas so badly that the people on the scene thought that he was killed. At least one witness saw Mohammad Salas, detained and injured, in an ambulance inside the police station about 7:30 p.m. Another witness testified that he saw Salas laid on a bed with a bandaged face in a hospital about 8 p.m. Around the same time, a bus hit a group of police personnel stationed in the street and killed three of them. Several hours later, the Fars News Agency published a videotaped interview with Mohammad Salas in which he confessed that he was the driver of the hit-and-run bus.

According to Zeinab Taheri, Salas’ attorney, he was severely injured at the time of this TV confession; seventeen parts of his skull had broken, his vision was almost gone, and his hearing was severely damaged. He was charged with the murder of police personnel and his confession became the principal evidence in his indictment. Later, while still injured, Salas declared that his confession was taken under torture and was not voluntary. Despite this, all ambiguities in the case, and substantial violation of the defendant’s rights, Salas was sentenced to death. The court’s ruling was upheld by Judge Mahmood Hatami and Judge Azizollah Razaqi at Branch 39 of the Iran’s Supreme Court.