Two senior Iranian judges have been shot dead at the country’s highest court, state media reported.

Judiciary news website Mizan said judges Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh were killed when an armed man entered a court in the capital Tehran on Saturday morning.

The attacker then allegedly committed suicide while fleeing the scene. A bodyguard was also reportedly injured in the attack.

The motive for the attack is unclear, but the two judges are said to have played a role in the persecution and killing of opponents of the Islamic regime throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The judiciary’s media office called the attack a premeditated assassination in a statement to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

It also said that based on preliminary findings, the attackers were not involved in any cases before the Supreme Court and that investigations had been launched to identify and arrest anyone else who may have been involved in the attack.

Judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told Iranian state television that the attacker entered the courtroom carrying a pistol before opening fire.

One of the judges, Razini, survived an assassination attempt in 1998.

The other person is Moghiseh. Sanctioned by the United States in 2019the Treasury Department accused him of “overseeing numerous unfair trials in which allegations were unsubstantiated and evidence was ignored.”

At the time, he was a judge of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. It is reported that he will be appointed to the Supreme Court in 2020.

Moghiseh was also one of seven Iranian judges sanctioned in 2023 by Canada, which said it “played a role in serious and systematic human rights violations.”