In a statement published on Monday, September 2, a group of United Nations experts warned of the increase in the number of executions in Iran in recent weeks, putting the figure at 400 since the beginning of the year. They denounce practices that “violate international standards.”
At least 400 victims, including 15 women: this is the grim assessment of the practice of the death penalty in Iran since the beginning of 2024, according to a group of United Nations experts. Numbering eleven (six Special Rapporteurs and the five members of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls), the latter are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the organization. In a press release on Monday, September 2, they warn of the upsurge in executions in August: at least 81 people were executed last month, approximately twice as many as the 45 executions reported in July, they say, without citing their sources.
UN experts say:deeply concerned by this sharp increase in the number of executions“About half (41) of the executions in August 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 voluntary homicides». «Executions for drug offences violate international standards“, experts emphasize.
A means of intimidation against street anger
The UN has repeatedly called on Tehran to impose a moratorium on executions, with a view to eventually abolishing the death penalty. In their statement, the experts stressed that the number of executions for drug-related offences has increased sharply in the Islamic Republic since 2021, with more than 400 executions in 2023. This increase has occurred despite revisions to the law aimed at limiting the application of the death penalty for such offences.
Human rights activists accuse the regime of using the death penalty as a means of intimidation in the face of the protest movement sparked by the death in custody in September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested for violating the strict dress code. According to UN experts, a Kurdish protester named Reza Rasaei 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 up placards“hostile to the regime,” deplore the authors of the press release.
