The Iran perform at least 834 people in 2023, an “alarming” increase of 43% compared to 2022 and the highest number since 2015, according to the annual report by non-governmental organizations Iran Human Rights and Ensemble contre la peine de mort.

“The number of executions it literally exploded 2023“, underlines the 16th report of the NGOs on the death penalty in Iran.

“It is the second time in 20 years that the number of executions exceeds the limit of 800 a year”, point out these organizations, which denounce a “terrifying” number.

Executions in Iran, one of the countries where most executions of convicts are recorded along with China and Saudi Arabia, are carried out by hanging.

In 2023 at least 22 women were executed in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the largest number in the last 10 years, NGOs point out.

The 2015 the Iranian authorities proceeded with the execution 972 peopleremind Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), based in Norway, and Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM), based in Paris.

In this 100-page report, the non-governmental organizations accuse Iran of resorting to the death penalty as a “tool of political repression” in the wake of the massive dissent movement in that country.

The movement was sparked by the death in September 2022 of Mahsha Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Iran, three days after she was arrested by morals police for not respecting Iran’s strict dress code. Her family and human rights activists claim she was beaten to death, which Iranian authorities deny.

The protests, which have rocked the Islamic Republic’s regime for weeks, have faded in the face of a crackdown that has led to hundreds of deaths, according to rights groups, and thousands of arrests, according to the UN.

83 people were executed in 2024

“Systematically cultivating fear in society is the only means for the regime to cling to power, and the death penalty is the most important tool,” complained Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam, director of IHRNGO, in a press release.

In a press conference he gave today in Paris, the director of the ECPM, Raphael Senouille Hazan, denounced “an instrumentalization of the death penalty by the regime to fight any questioning”.

The report does not include in its statistics the “551 people, at least, who were killed during the demonstrations or other extrajudicial executions inside or outside the prisons”, the relevant press release underlines.

According to NGOs, at least 8 protesters they are among the people executed in 2023, of whom six were arrested as part of the protests and convicted.

According to the report, at least 471 people (56% of all executions) were executed in 2023 for drug-related cases and at least 282 people (34% of all executions) were executed for murder.

Iran applies sharia (Islamic law) which provides for the death penalty for crimes such as drug trafficking, rape or murder.

“The spectacular escalation in the number of drug-related executions in 2023 is particularly worrying,” the non-governmental organizations estimate, stressing that the people executed “belong to the most marginalized communities in society and ethnic minorities.”

For his part, Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam expressed his deep concern “at the lack of strong reaction at the international level” in the face of the executions, at a time when the international community is focused on the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas. This lack of reaction “sends a bad message to the authorities” of Iran, he points out.

So far in 2024, at least 83 people have been executed in Iran, according to IHRNGO.