The two NGOs Amnesty International and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran denounced on Wednesday a “frenzy of executions” in Iran, where more than 250 people suffered the death penalty in the first six months of the year “after systematically unfair trials “. .
“During the first half of 2022, Iranian authorities executed at least one person a day on average,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy North Africa and Middle East Director, said in a press release.
“The state apparatus is carrying out large-scale murders throughout the country as part of a heinous offensive against the right to life,” it continues.
“A well-established practice of systematic executions”
Due to this “frenzy of executions”, at the “terrifying pace”, Iran could very quickly exceed the already very high number of death sentences inflicted in 2021, that is, 314, according to the press release.
Of the 251 executions recorded between January 1 and June 30, 2022, “the real figures being undoubtedly higher”, 146 convicts had been sentenced for murder, “as part of a well-established practice of systematic executions”, d after this text.
In Iran, the two NGOs note, the death penalty is handed down after “systematically unfair” trials, and confessions “obtained under torture are commonly used as evidence.”
At least 86 other convicts were executed for drug-related crimes that, “according to international law, should not be punishable by death,” the two NGOs stress.
“This increase in executions, particularly in audienceshows once again that Iran is out of step with the rest of the world, while 144 countries have rejected the death penalty in law or in practice,” said Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, an Iranian NGO co-signatory of the text.
In June, at least twelve people were executed in a single day in Alborz province (northwest), as well as in Sistan and Balochistan (southeast).
Iran, according to civil society, is experiencing a major crackdown as protests over living conditions continue amid a severe economic crisis.
Trade unionists, intellectuals but also filmmakers were arrested, including director Mohammad Rasoulof, whose film “The Devil Does Not Exist”, about the death penalty in Iran, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020.
Source: BFM TV
