2023-06-02 02:01:00
Iranian authorities have executed at least 173 people convicted of drug offenses this year after systematically unfair trials, almost three times as many as last year at this time, Amnesty International reported today.
Executions for drug offenses accounted for two thirds of all executions that have been carried out in the first five months of 2023, and have mainly affected people from marginalized and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Approximately 20% of recorded executions have been of people from the impoverished and persecuted Baloch ethnic minorityi from Iran, despite the fact that only 5% of the Iranian population belongs to it.
“The unbridled pace at which authorities are carrying out executions for drug offences, thereby violating international law, exposes their inhumanity and blatant disregard for the right to life. The international community must ensure that cooperation in anti-narcotics efforts does not contribute, directly or indirectly, to the arbitrary deprivation of life and other human rights violations in Iran,” said Diana Eltahawy, Deputy Director of Amnesty International for the Middle East and North Africa.
“The international community must ensure that cooperation in anti-drug efforts does not contribute, directly or indirectly, to the arbitrary deprivation of life and other human rights violations in Iran.”
“States and intergovernmental bodies should condemn the Iranian authorities in the strongest terms for these arbitrary executions, demand an official moratorium on all executions, send representatives to visit prisoners sentenced to death, and request to attend their trials. on crimes punishable by capital punishment. Given the crisis of impunity for mass arbitrary executions, they must also urgently seek effective formulas for accountability.”
This year, the authorities have also significantly increased the global number of executions for all crimes, reaching a minimum of 282 so far in 2023, almost double the number of executions recorded at the beginning of June last year. If they continue with this alarming rate of executions in general, by the end of the year the number of executed prisoners could reach almost a thousand.
A lethal war against the poor
The death penalty affects above all poor and vulnerable people, often unaware of their rights and unable to afford independent legal representation. The families of those who are executed often suffer the terrible financial consequences of losing their breadwinner and being left heavily in debt for legal expenses.
A relative of a woman currently on death row, who was the breadwinner for the family before she was imprisoned, told Amnesty International:
“He never saw his public defender, who lied to the family, promising that he would get the death sentence overturned if they paid him an exorbitant amount of money. They sold everything they had to pay him, including his sheep. As soon as they gave him the money, the lawyer disappeared, leaving the family totally in debt.”
The teenage son of a prisoner executed for drug-related offenses told Amnesty International:
“I should take care of my exams like any other boy, not be working. My salary is not enough to cover the needs of my family because we have requested many loans. I don’t even have money to enroll in school next year. If my father had not been executed, I would now be thinking about my future, not about how to get money for my family.”
Executions for drug-related offenses are often the result of poor investigations of the Iranian anti-drug police and other security forces. Trials for drug offenses are held before Revolutionary Courts and are consistently unfair: defendants are denied their procedural rights, including the right to access legal representation, and “confessions” obtained under torture are used as evidence to convict them.
One person on death row told Amnesty International:
“In the Revolutionary Courts, the judges ask you if the drug is yours and it doesn’t matter if you say yes or no. At my trial, the judge told me to shut up when I said it wasn’t mine. He told me that he was sentenced to death and ordered me to sign a document accepting the sentence. He didn’t even let my lawyer speak on my behalf.”
The wave of executions continues
Iranian authorities have also carried out executions for other acts that, under international law, should never carry a death sentence.
In the first five months of 2023, five people have been executed in connection with the protests; a man who had had consensual sex with a married woman for “adultery”; and two social media users on charges including “apostasy” and “insulting the prophet of Islam”.
The security forces have aggravated the anguish of the families of the prisoners by violently repressing peaceful demonstrations outside the prisons where the executions are scheduled, using tear gas and live ammunition, according to denounce protesters.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, the characteristics and guilt or innocence of the accused, and the method of execution used by the State. The death penalty violates the right to life and is the highest exponent of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
FIN
Note to journalists: In 2022, Iran was the second country in the world, after China, where more executions were carried out. For more information and figures, see Amnesty International’s global report Death sentences and executions 2022.
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