A teenager was among the first to be put to death due to anti-government demonstrations in Iran.

According to official television, Iran has killed three men who were charged with killing police officers during anti-government protests in January. These are the first hangings related to the protests. Saleh Mohammadi, a teenage member of Iran’s national wrestling squad, was one of the guys, according to sources. 

According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, the executions occurred in the northern Qom region on Thursday morning local time following the Supreme Court’s upholding of their death sentences. Iranian authorities responded to the statewide protests, which started in December and intensified in January, with a bloody crackdown. Thousands of people were slain, according to rights groups.

Mohammadi, Mehdi Ghasemi, and Saeed Davoudi were convicted of killing two police officers in separate incidents in Qom, according to Tasnim, a semi-official news organization connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

According to Tasnim, they were also found guilty of “moharebeh”—waging war against God—one of the accusations Iran employs to execute demonstrators and opponents of the Islamic Republic. Rights organizations claim that the three individuals were executed without a proper trial after confessing under duress.  They died the day after a dual Iranian-Swedish national was put to death in Iran. According to Iran’s judiciary news site Mizan Online, Kouroush Keyvani was hanged after being found guilty of spying for Israel.

Keyvani was reportedly arrested during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel last June “It is clear to us that the legal process that led to the execution of the Swedish citizen has not been legally secure,” Sweden’s foreign minister said in a statement.

Anger at the collapse of the Iranian currency and the skyrocketing cost of living reportedly led to protests that expanded to 180 cities and villages across all 31 provinces. They soon expanded into calls for political reform and emerged as one of the biggest threats to the clerical establishment since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Protesters told that the deadly response by security forces was unlike anything they had ever seen, even if a near complete closure of the internet and other services made it difficult to learn what was going on in the nation.

At least 7,000 people were killed in the January crackdown, including 236 minors and 6,488 demonstrators, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana). In January, US President Donald Trump threatened to take “strong action” against Iran if demonstrators were put to death. There was “no plan” to hang individuals, according to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. 

The Norway-based Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw claims that one demonstrator, Erfan Soltani, who had been detained on January 8 and whose family had been informed that he would be put to death within days, was later released on bail.  Iran’s judiciary disputed that he had received a death sentence, claiming he was simply facing prison sentences for security-related offenses.