24 October 2020 :
World Day Against the Death Penalty: 209 Executions Since Start of 2020 in Iran.
Iran Human Rights calls on the people and civil society in Iran to stand against the death penalty to mark this day. IHR Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “Iran has become one of the key battlegrounds between the abolitionist movement and the Islamic Republic that executes. In recent months, the Iranian people launched one of the biggest anti-death penalty movements in the world, with millions participating in the “don’t execute them” campaign. This is while the Islamic Republic has consistently been on top of the list of countries that carry out the death penalty.”
10 October 2020 marks the 18th year that this day was set as the World Day Against the Death Penalty. Each year, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty focuses on a particular issue surrounding the death penalty, the individuals executed and those awaiting execution. The issue being highlighted this year is the right to access legal counsel for individuals who are at risk of execution.
This year at least 209 individuals have been executed in Iran. Of those, 202 were male and 7 female and 1 prisoner was executed in public, which is a significant decrease compared to the same period last year when 12 prisoners were executed publicly.
Official sources and domestic media in Iran only reported 67 of those executions and the other 142 were recorded by Iran Human Rights’ statistics department through internal sources and human rights activists.
Since the beginning of this year, 5 political prisoners namely, Hedayat Abdullahpour, Diako Rasoulzadeh, Saber Sheikh-Abdullah, Mostafa Salehi and Navid Afkari were executed. Furthermore, the death sentences of Reza Asgari and Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd on charges of espionage were carried out during this period.
In the first 10 months of this year, the executions of 2 juvenile offenders who were arrested and tried before the age of 18 were recorded and there are reports of another execution of a juvenile offender which IHR is investigating further. During the same period last year, two juvenile offenders were recorded as having been executed.
In addition, following a prison riot in Mahabad Prison on Sunday, 29 March 2020, a juvenile offender, Daniel Zeyn-Ol-Abedini and several other prisoners were transferred to solitary confinement for participating in the protest. Daniel Zeyn-Ol-Abedini was severely beaten by Mahabad prison officials before being transferred to Miandoab Prison where he was beaten again. On Thursday, April 2, prison officials contacted Daniel’s family and informed them of his death. His body was covered in severe beating and injury marks.
Qisas (retribution death penalty) counts for most of the executions:
164 of those executed during this period were sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) on the charge of “murder", which is the exact number as the previous year. After murder, with 18 executions, drug-related charges held the highest number of executions in the first 10 months of this year. During the same period last year, 25 prisoners were executed on "drug-related" charges.
1 of the 209 death penalty cases in the first 10 months of this year was the execution of a man accused of drinking alcohol in the city of Mashhad. His death sentence was carried out on July 9. This is one of the few recorded executions for drinking alcohol which has been confirmed publicly by official sources of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The executions recorded by IHR’s statistics department show that the number of executions this year is similar to those recorded last year. In the same period last year (1st January-10th October 2019), 212 executions were recorded, of which 68 were announced by state media or officials and a further 144 were carried out secretly.
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4460/
