An Iranian man died after he was submitted to a lashing penalty inside a jail in Iran's Turkish-majority eastern Azerbaijan province.

The inmate, identified as Hadi Atazadeh, had been handed an unspecified prison sentence and lashes after being charged with alcohol possession one and a half years ago. Under the Islamic Republic's strict penal code, consumption and possession of alcoholic drinks are punishable by up to 80 lashes and/or varying imprisonment terms in some cases.

Atazadeh's relatives released videos of what seemed to be a morgue in his hometown, Ahar, where the black and blue body with obvious lash marks was being washed as part of the Islamic pre-burial ritual. The growing backlash drew reactions from local justice department authorities who offered different explanations and denied the lashing had caused the man's death. A brief official statement on Sept. 1 said the prisoner had reported some pain in his stomach before being transferred to a hospital "where despite the efforts made, he unfortunately died the day after." The statement claimed no torture marks were detected in forensic examinations. Other reports on state media attributed the death to multiple causes, including suicide, the coronavirus and "possible intoxication, which left the prisoner brain-dead."

The victim's brother, however, refuted all of those accounts in an interview with Voice of America's Persian service, saying the prisoner had no medical history and remained in "absolutely good health" prior to his death before fellow inmates urged the guards to offer immediate medical attention, as the victim went through deteriorating pain triggered by the lashes.