Iran executed 94 people since 2023 – watchdog
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Iran has executed nearly 94 persons since the beginning of 2023 following a “grossly unfair trials,” Amnesty International, an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, said on Thursday.
The Iranian authorities have executed at least one Ahwazi Arab, 14 Kurds and 13 Baluchis following grossly unfair trials, the organization said, adding, they sentenced at least a dozen others to death since the start of the year.
“The Iranian authorities are carrying out executions on a frightening scale. Their actions amount to an assault on the right to life and a shameless attempt not only to further oppress ethnic minorities but to spread fear that dissent will be met with brute force, either in the streets or in the gallows,” said Roya Boroumand, Executive Director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, an Iranian human rights organization.
The authorities executed at least 94 people in January and February alone, amid horrific sexual violence and other torture allegations, in a notable rise in executions compared to the same time last year, according to research by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center and Amnesty International.
In late February, the authorities have sentenced to death at least six Ahwazi Arabs and six Baluchis, some of whom were convicted in relation to protests that have engulfed Iran since September 2022.
Amnesty International said it “opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. The death penalty is a violation of the right to life and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.”
Under international law, the imposition of the death penalty following an unfair trial constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life.
In recent weeks, at least 12 individuals from the Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi ethnic minorities have been sentenced to death following grossly unfair trials.
Between December 2022 and January 2023, at least six young men from the Baluchi minority were sentenced to death in separate trials in relation to protests that took place in Sistan and Baluchestan province in September 2022, the organization noted.
“It is harrowing that executions routinely occur amid the systematic use of torture-tainted ‘confessions’ to convict defendants in grossly unfair trials,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“We also urge all states to exercise universal jurisdiction over all Iranian officials reasonably suspected of criminal responsibility for crimes under international law and other grave violations of human rights,” she added.