Tuesday, March 05, 2024 – Iran executed a 'staggering' total of at least 834 people last year, the highest number since 2015 as capital punishment surged in the Islamic Republic, two rights groups said Tuesday.
At least 22 women were executed, marking the highest number
in the past decade, the report said.
Fifteen of them were hanged on murder charges and NGOs have
long warned that women who kill an abusive partner or relative risk being
hanged.
It marked only the second time in two decades that over 800
executions were recorded in a year, after 972 executions in 2015, Norway-based
Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty said
in the joint report.
The groups accused Iran of using the death penalty to spread
fear throughout society in the wake of the protests sparked by the September
2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini that shook the authorities.
'Instilling societal fear is the regime's only way to hold
on to power, and the death penalty is its most important instrument,' said IHR
director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam in the report, which described the figure of
834 as a 'staggering total'.
Iran has executed nine men in cases linked to attacks on
security forces during the 2022 protests - two in 2022, six in 2023 and one so
far in 2024 - according to the rights groups.
But executions have been stepped up on other charges,
notably in drug-related cases, which had until recent years seen a fall.
'Of particular concern is the dramatic escalation in the
number of drug-related executions in 2023, which rose to 471 people, more than
18 times higher than the figures recorded in 2020,' said the report.
ECPM director Raphael Chenuil-Hazan said the 'lack of
reaction' by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was sending
'the wrong signal to the Iranian authorities'.
Most hangings in Iran are carried out within the confines of
prison but the report said that in 2023 the number of hangings carried out in
public in Iran tripled from 2022, with seven people hanged in public spaces.
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