Iran implements death penalty at “alarming rate”: UN

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Iran executed more than 250 people including at least four children in 2020 and so far, during 2021, it has implemented 230 death penalties including 9 women and a child that was killed secretly, a report by the UN independent investigator on human rights in Iran said on Monday.

“There are extensive, vague and arbitrary grounds in Iran for imposing the death sentence, which quickly can turn this punishment into a political tool,” Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, told the UN General Assembly in delivering his annual report.

Javaid Rehman told the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee that Iran continues to implement the death penalty “at an alarming rate.”

“The absence of official statistics and lack of transparency around executions means that this practice escapes scrutiny resulting in serious abuses preventing accountability,” he added.

According to Amnesty International, Iran was the top executioner in the Middle East last year, accounting for more than half the region’s 493 executions.

Amnesty’s annual figures exclude China, where executions, believed to number in the thousands, are classified as a state secret, and omit executions from some countries marred by conflict like Syria.

Rehman pointed out, his latest report highlights serious concerns over the grounds Iran uses for imposing the death penalty, such as “vague national security charges.”

Iran also has “deeply flawed judicial processes, where even the most basic safeguards are absent,” he noted.

“These elements, and the heavy reliance by courts on forced confessions extracted under torture and other fair trial violations lead me to conclude that the imposition of the death penalty in the Islamic Republic of Iran constitutes arbitrary deprivation of life,” Rehman stated.

Rehman, called it “imperative” for Iran to undertake criminal law and justice reforms, starting “most urgently” with a moratorium on the death penalty for child offenders.

During the past ten years, Center for Human Rights in Iran has monitored over 64 executions of juveniles of which four at least were executed in 2020.