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IRAN EXECUTIONS THREE TIMES LAST YEAR'S RATE –U.N.
February 2, 2011: Iran has witnessed a dramatic increase in executions so far in 2011, United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay said today and her office said the rate was three times that of last year.
Expressing alarm at the rise, she said at least 66 people, including three known to be political dissidents, were executed in January. Pillay aides said they had recorded about 300 executions for the whole of last year.
"We have urged Iran, time and time again, to halt executions," said Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, in a statement issued through the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, where she is based.
"I am very dismayed that instead of heeding our calls, the Iranian authorities appear to have stepped up the use of the death penalty."
Most executions were for drug offenses, she said, but at least three were for political activism. Two executions were held in public. Pillay said she was worried about the large number of political prisoners, drug offenders and even juvenile offenders who remain on death row in Iran.
Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, said tracking of official Iranian reports and the country's media showed that last year the figure was running at about 18 to 25 a month. "So this year it is triple that rate," he told Reuters. (Sources: Reuters, Fox News, 02/02/2011)
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