Seven people, including two women, were hanged in Iran on Saturday as the Islamic Republic escalates its use of the death penalty for political purposes, according to the Norway-based non-governmental organization IHR (Iran Human Rights).

Parvin Mousavi, a 53-year-old mother of two, was hanged in a prison in Urmia (northwest), along with five men; all six had been convicted of drug trafficking, the IHR said in a statement.

In Nissapur (east), Fateme Abdullahi, 27, was hanged after being convicted of murdering her husband, who was also her cousin, the NGO added in a separate statement.

The IHR counts 223 executions so far this year, 50 of which took place within the current month. It finds an acceleration in executions after the end of the Persian New Year and Ramadan celebrations in April.

In general, executions in Iran, which along with China and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that carry out the most in the world, are carried out by hanging.

In addition, the Islamic Republic executes the most women in the world, according to human rights organizations. These are often women who have suffered forced marriages or abusive behaviour.

At least 22 women were executed in 2023, the highest number in ten years, NGOs report.

“The silence of the international community is unacceptable,” IHR director Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam told AFP. The people and especially the women who are executed, he underlined, very often “belong to poor and marginalized strata of Iranian society” and did not have “fair trials”.

According to the data collected by IHR, Parvin Mousavi remained imprisoned for four years until her execution. According to a source in the organization, he was convicted because he agreed for a fee of about 15 euros to transport a package that was supposed to contain drugs — in fact, it was five kilograms of morphine.