More than 400 people, including 15 women, have been executed in Iran this year, UN experts said Monday, raising concerns over a surge in executions in August. At least 81 people were executed in August, about twice as many as the 45 executions reported in July, the independent experts said in a statement, without citing their sources.
The number of executions reported this year is more than 400 people, including 15 women, adds this group of experts, made up of six Special Rapporteurs and the five members of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls. These experts, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, do not speak on behalf of the organization. They say they are “deeply concerned by this sharp increase in the number of executions”.
About half (41) of the executions were for drug-related offences, the statement said, recalling that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party, “limits the application of the death penalty to the “most serious crimes”, that is to say to voluntary homicides”. “Executions for drug offences violate international standards”the experts said. The UN has repeatedly called on Iran to impose a moratorium on executions, with a view to eventually abolishing the death penalty.
Death penalty as a means of intimidation
They point out that the number of executions for drug-related offenses has increased sharply in Iran since 2021, with more than 400 executions in 2023, and note that this increase has occurred despite revisions to the law that aimed to limit the application of the death penalty for such offenses.
Human rights activists accuse Iran of using the death penalty as a means of intimidation in the face of protests sparked by the death in custody in September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested for violating a strict dress code.
In their statement, the UN experts said that Reza Rasaei, a Kurdish protester, was executed on August 6 in Dizel Abad prison. “Based on a confession allegedly obtained under torture, Rasaei was sentenced to death for murdering a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while he was attending a ceremony… holding placards reading ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’.”.
According to experts, the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence even though his co-defendants recanted their testimony about his involvement in the murder, and even though a medical examiner provided testimony also disputing his involvement.
