NGO: Iranian authorities have executed over 50 people this year

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Iran Human Rights said it confirmed at least 55 executions during the first 26 days of the year: four were related to the protests, another 37 to drug cases.

Iranian authorities have executed 55 people so far in 2023, the Norway-based non-governmental organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) said on Friday, adding that the growing resort to the death penalty is intended to instill “terror” in the country rocked by mass protests since September.

For its part, Amnesty International reported that three young people who were sentenced to death for taking part in protests – the youngest is only 18 years old – suffered “horrendous torture” in prison.

The IHR said it confirmed at least 55 executions during the first 26 days of the year: four related to the protests, another 37 to drug cases. The NGO was unable to verify the reasons the remaining 14 people were executed.

At least 107 people are at risk of execution for taking part in the protests, IHR added.

“Every execution of the Islamic Republic is political” and the main purpose is “to instill fear and terror in society”, he underlined.

“To stop this state killing machine, no execution, political or otherwise, must be tolerated,” insisted IHR director Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam.

Activists accuse Iran of using the death penalty as a tool of intimidation as part of the regime’s attempt to crack down on protests that have continued unabated since September 16, following the death at the hands of morality police of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish Mahsha Amini. , who had been arrested three days earlier for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women. Thousands of protesters have been arrested.

For the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, “the instrumentalization of criminal proceedings” by Iranian authorities to punish protesters “is tantamount to state-sanctioned murder.”

Torture

In a statement, Amnesty International alleged that three youths who were sentenced to death in December for inciting vandalism during protests in Mazandaran province (north) in September suffered torture, including “beatings”, “phalanxes”, “mock executions”, ” electric shock”.

Javad Rouhi, 31, was tortured, including “sexual assault,” the NGO says. Mehdi Mohammadifard, 19, was held in solitary confinement for a week in a cell full of mice and cockroaches and raped, Amnesty continues. Arsia Takdastan, 18, was subjected to mock executions, with a “pistol to his head” and threats to kill him if he did not “confess” in front of a video camera.

IHR and other NGOs have not yet released statistics on executions in Iran in 2022. But IHR reported in early December that at least 500 people had been hanged, a number that was already a tragic five-year record.

At the latest count by the same NGO, Iranian security forces killed at least 488 people during the mass protests, 64 of whom were under the age of 18.

Mohsen Sekari, 23, was executed in Tehran on December 8 for allegedly wounding a member of the security forces, while Majidreza Rahnavard, also 23, was publicly hanged in Machad on December 12 for allegedly killing two security forces with a knife.

On 14 January, Iranian-British Alireza Akbari was executed after being sentenced to death for spying for Britain.

Analysts say the mass protests have subsided since November, but the protest movement remains a challenge for the Islamic Republic and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

RES-EMP

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