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URGENT APPEAL TO STOP THE EXECUTION OF MR BEHROUZ EHSANI AND MR MEHDI HASSANI SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR POLITICAL REASONS IN IRAN
September 22, 2024: Hands off Cain appeals to Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, Volker Türk, High Commissioner for human rights, and Antonio Tajani, Minister for foreign affairs of Italy, to intervene to avoid Mr Behrouz Ehsani’s and Mr. Mehdi Hassani’s execution.
“We, representatives of Hands Off Cain - the association behind the approval of the Resolution calling for a universal moratorium on executions - know that Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, two political prisoners who supported the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), have been sentenced to death. They have been sentenced on charges of “baghi (rebellion), moharebeh (waging war against God), corruption on Earth, membership in the PMOI, collecting classified information, and conspiracy against national security.”
The 69-year-old political prisoner Behrouz Ehsani was arrested on December 6, 2022, in Tehran and transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence detention center (Ward 209 of Evin Prison), where he was subjected to torture. He is currently held in Ward 4 of Evin Prison.
Mehdi Hassani, 48, was arrested on September 11, 2022, in Zanjan and transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison, where he was subjected to physical and psychological torture. He is currently imprisoned in Ward 8 of Evin Prison.
We know the bloody fury of the Iranian regime towards supporters of the PMOI recently recognized and denounced also by Javaid Rehman, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran. In his accurate analysis of the first decade after the assumption of theocratic power, with the massacre in 1988 of tens of thousands of political prisoners, many of them members of PMOI, the Special Rapporteur notes that the “atrocity crimes” as reported – which took place all across Iran – represent the commission of the worst and the most egregious human rights abuses of our living memory whereby high-ranking state officials connived, conspired and actively engaged to plan, order and commit crimes against humanity and genocide against the nationals of their own state.
Through the prism of the first decade after the Revolution of 1979 in Iran, the Special Rapporteur provides an insight into the nature of the Iranian regime which executed at least 464 people during 2024. A number that grow up day by day without respite.
We know your commitment for the respect of the right to life and for the life of the right. For this reason we ask you to intervene to avoid Mr Behrouz Ehsani’s and Mr. Mehdi Hassani’s execution.
We appeal you now that the General Assembly will adopt a new Resolution calling for a universal moratorium on executions aware, as we are, that the moratorium we propose is the only pragmatic way to save life giving the time needed by different States to definitively abolish this form of punishment which represents only a tool of the past.”
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