The UN report has reported more than a hundred executions during the first three months of 2022, the equivalent of a third of the total number recorded in 2021

UN reports new surge in executions in Iran

photo_camera AFP/ROBIN UTRECHT - Demonstrators display banners with the image of Ebrahim Raisi during a two-day protest against the Iranian president, the eighth president of the Islamic Republic, in front of the temporary seat of the House of Representatives in The Hague in September 2021. Protesters hold the ultra-conservative Raisi partly responsible for poverty, oppression and executions in Iran

The upward trend of executions that has characterised the Islamic Republic of Iran in recent years continues. A new report presented this week to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva - where the secretary general of the international body, Antonio Guterres, was also present - has reported a worrying increase in death sentences in the country. 

"While 260 people were executed in 2020, and at least 310 in 2021, including 14 women", during the first three months of 2022 "around 105 individuals were executed, most of them belonging to minority groups", said the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif. These figures corroborate the growing use of the death penalty, even for minor crimes, in line with the predictions of several analysts following the election of the ultra-Orthodox Ebrahim Raisi as president. 

In March alone, more than 50 people accused of drug trafficking and drug use and sentenced to death were transferred to Shiraz prison where they were to be executed. "The death penalty continues to be imposed for charges that are not the most serious crimes and in ways that are contrary to fair trial standards," Al-Nashif added. 

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In this regard, reports of death sentences being imposed on persons under the age of 18 at the time of the verdict represent a further violation of international law. According to the Deputy High Commissioner, between August 2021 and March 2022, at least two juveniles were executed, and more than 85 remained on death row. However, "in February 2022, in a positive development, the Supreme Court decided to revoke the death penalty against juveniles," commended Al-Nashif. 

In addition, the situation of instability and social turmoil that the country has been facing for several months now has caused cases of police violence to escalate. "Excessive use of force is the automatic reaction of the authorities to manage assemblies," Al-Nashif denounced, adding to the worrying number of deaths in jails and prisons, the unnecessary deaths caused by violence against peaceful demonstrators and detainees. Executions that, to date, premeditated or not, have gone unpunished.

In response to these accusations, the Iranian foreign ministry criticised the UN report, stating that the reports are "politically motivated, unfair, biased and not based on reality", in the words of the ministry's spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh. Similarly, the Persian country's deputy permanent representative in Geneva, Mehdi Aliabadi, said that "reducing the goal of human rights to a trivial political tool is outrageous and shameful". 

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Firuz Musalu, one case among hundreds

Some of the latest executions in the country have taken place this week. Just a few days ago, a 21-year-old man of Uzbek origin, convicted of killing two Shia leaders and seriously wounding a third near the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad during Ramadan, was covering his way to the end of death row. 

Meanwhile, according to the Hengaw Human Rights Organisation, the Kurdish political prisoner Firuz Musalu was "secretly" executed in the central prison of Urmia on 20 June. The execution was motivated by charges of waging "war against God through membership of an opposition group", reported Radio Liberty. 

The execution of 12 inmates in a prison in the southeast of the country (eleven men and one woman), reported by Iran Human Rights (IHR), adds to the recent list. Sentenced to hang in Zahedan - a prison located in the province of Sistan Balochistan, near the Afghan-Pakistani borders - for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder, the twelve executed were from the Baloch ethnic minority. A minority of Sunni belief in a predominantly Shia country, the Baloch are one of the groups most affected by the increase in executions. 

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All these punishments have only increased fears that "the regime is intensifying repression", as The National Council of Resistance of Iran has warned. 

United Nations: "Eliminate all forms of corporal punishment"

On Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Office, through its spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, urged Tehran to end any criminal sanctions that carry any form of corporal punishment, "including amputations, flogging and stoning, in accordance with the country's obligations under international human rights law". 

"We are deeply concerned about the likely imminent amputation of the fingers of eight men convicted of theft in Iran and urge the Iranian authorities to suspend the planned amputations," it said in a statement on the recent conviction of eight men who have now been identified. 

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The country with the most executions in the world since 2017

In the past year 2021 alone, executions in Iran increased by more than 25%, according to reports by the international organisations IHR and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), doubling after the rise to the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi - accused of taking part in the 1988 massacre in which thousands of political prisoners were killed. 

All this, coupled with reports by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) that more than 85% of executions are carried out "in secret and without official and public information", make Iran one of the countries with the most death sentences in the world. In fact, as of 2017, Amnesty International ranks the country number one in executions, with more than half of the executions recorded worldwide.

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