More than 600 people have been executed in Iran since the start of the year, the highest annual figure in eight years with two months remaining before the end of the year, an advocacy group said on Friday. human rights.
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Nine executions took place in a single day this week in a prison near Tehran, while two people face execution for adultery, says Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR).
The IHR and other non-governmental organizations have accused Iran of using the death penalty as a means to sow fear, following protests over women’s rights that rocked the country for several months starting in September 2022 .
“The international community must respond to more than 600 executions in 10 months, or two state killings per day,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
“Silence is indirect consent to these crimes,” he added, noting that Iran took over the presidency of the Social Forum of the United Nations Human Rights Council earlier this week.
The 604 executions recorded by the IHR are already higher than the 582 recorded in 2022, and are the most numerous since 2015, when 972 executions were recorded.
Activists have expressed dismay at the growing number of drug-related executions, which have increased in recent years after previously declining following changes to Iran’s penal code.
The latest executions on Wednesday involved nine men, including an Afghan, hanged at Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, a suburb of Tehran, most of them for murder convictions, according to the IHR.
The NGO also claims that a man and a woman, Abolfazl Barat Vakili and Leila Kholghi Sakachayi, were sentenced to death by a Tehran court in August for adultery. Sex outside of marriage is illegal in Iran, but death sentences for adultery have become rarer in recent years.
“The international community should not tolerate executions taking place for consensual sexual relations (…) in the 21st century, by a government that sits at the United Nations,” insisted Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam.