Geneva, Switzerland:

More than 900 people were reportedly executed in Iran last year, including around 40 in a single week in December, the United Nations rights chief said on Tuesday.

“It is deeply disturbing that yet again we see an increase in the number of people subjected to the death penalty in Iran year-on-year,” Volker Turk said, adding that at least 901 people were reportedly executed in 2024.

“It is high time Iran stemmed this ever-swelling tide of executions.”

Iran uses capital punishment for major crimes including murder, drug trafficking, rape and sexual assault. The Islamic republic executes more people per year than any other nation except China, for which no reliable figures are available, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.

Activists are increasingly alarmed over the surge in hangings in Iran.

They accuse the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of using capital punishment as a tool to instil fear throughout society, particularly in the wake of 2022-2023 nationwide protests.

The UN rights office said that most of last year’s executions were for drug-related offences but it said “dissidents and people connected to the 2022 protests were also executed”. 

“There was also a rise in the number of women executed.”

Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), which closely tracks executions in Iran, said in a report on Monday that at least 31 women had been executed in 2024.

“We oppose the death penalty under all circumstances,” Turk said.

“It is incompatible with the fundamental right to life and raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he said.

“And, to be clear, it can never be imposed for conduct that is protected under international human rights law.”

The UN rights chief urged the Iranian authorities to halt all further executions, and to place a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to ultimately abolishing it.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Human rights groups including US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) and Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) also confirmed the execution of at least two dozen people in Karaj. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Iran on Wednesday (August 7, 2024) hanged at least 29 convicts in a single day, including 26 in a group execution in one prison, a rights group said, a day after facing international condemnation for executing a man in connection with 2022 protests.

Norway-based Iran Human Rights said 26 men were executed in Ghezelhesar Prison in Karaj outside Tehran, while three other men were executed in Karaj’s city prison.

Also Read: Iran condemns UN experts report on 2022 protests

Those executed, who included two Afghan nationals, had been convicted of murder, drug-related and rape charges.

Other rights groups including US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) and Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) also confirmed the execution of at least two dozen people in Karaj.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused Iran, which they say executes more people annually than any nation other than China, of making use of the death penalty on all charges to instill fear in society in the wake of the 2022 protests.

“Without an immediate response from the international community, hundreds of individuals could become victims of the Islamic Republic’s killing machine in the coming months,” said Iran Human Rights (IHR) Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

IHR emphasised that a group execution on this scale was unprecedented in recent years in Iran, with the last comparable example dating back to 2009.

‘Abhorrent arbitrary execution’

Human rights groups also condemned Iran’s execution of a man convicted of killing a Revolutionary Guard in 2022 protests, with activists saying his confession had been obtained by torture.

Gholamreza Rasaei, in his mid-thirties, was the 10th man executed by Iran in connection with the months-long protests that erupted in September 2022 after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, had been arrested for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code for women.

Rasaei was hanged in prison in the western city of Kermanshah on Tuesday after being convicted of killing the Guards colonel, according to the Mizan Online website of the Iranian judiciary.

Rasaei, a member of the Kurdish ethnic minority and follower of the Yarsan faith, was executed in secret with neither his family nor his lawyer given prior notice and his family then forced to bury his body in a remote area far from his home, Amnesty International said.

“Iranian authorities have carried out the abhorrent arbitrary execution in secret of a young man who was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention… and then sentenced to death after a sham trial,” said Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Eltahawy.

She said the execution was another instance of Iran using the death penalty as a “tool of political repression to instil fear among the population”.

Amnesty said his death sentence was handed out in October 2023 “after a grossly unfair trial that relied on his forced ‘confessions’ obtained under torture and other ill-treatment, including beatings, electric shocks, suffocation and sexual violence”.

‘Unfair and inhumane’

France’s foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned Rasaei’s execution, and reiterated its “unchanging opposition to the death penalty in all places and circumstances”, calling it an “unfair and inhumane punishment”.

The office of the US deputy special envoy for Iran Abram Paley accused Iran of subjecting protesters to “sham trials and forced confessions”.

IHR said Rasaei had stated in court that the confessions had been obtained under torture, but this was ignored by the judge who also dismissed two expert testimonies, including a forensics report, that argued he could not have been behind the killing.

IHR said Iran has now executed at least 345 people this year alone, adding the latest executions showed there was no let-up in its use of the death penalty since reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian was sworn in last week.

Amiry-Moghaddam said that Iran was “exploiting” global focus on the tensions between Iran and arch-enemy Israel by “mass killing prisoners and intensifying the suppression in Iran.”

Tehran:

Iran’s judiciary has executed a “terrorist” over a drone attack that targeted a defence ministry site in central Iran last year, state media reported on Sunday.

According to state TV, the person “planned to explode the workshop complex of the Ministry of Defence in Isfahan under guidance of the intelligence officer of Mossad”, Israel’s spy agency.

The date of the execution and the identity of the accused person were not immediately clear.

Iran has several known nuclear research sites in the Isfahan region, including a uranium conversion plant. The country’s sanction-hit nuclear programme has been the target of sabotage, assassinations of scientists and cyber-attacks.

Tehran has accused Israel of carrying out several covert actions on its soil.

Iran’s intelligence ministry said in February 2023 that it had arrested the “main actors” involved in the drone attack on a defence ministry site in Isfahan, home to the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.

The previous month, an anti-aircraft system destroyed a drone, and two others exploded during an attack on a defence ministry facility in the province, officials said at the time. 

According to the defence ministry, the night-time attack left no casualties and only caused minor damage.

Authorities did not elaborate on activities at the site, but IRNA said the strike had targeted “an ammunition manufacturing plant”.

Iran has been engaged in a shadow war for years with its arch-enemy Israel.

In August last year Iran claimed to have foiled a “very complex” Mossad-initiated project to “sabotage” its ballistic missile industry.

In January, Iran hanged four members of its Kurdish minority on charges of spying for Israel. They were convicted of collaborating with Israel on a plan to sabotage an Iranian defence site in Isfahan.

In April 2021, Tehran announced it had started producing 60 percent enriched uranium at the Natanz site, a day after accusing Israel of an attack there.

Since last October Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip against Hamas militants has sent tensions soaring. Iran has supported Hamas in the war, but denied any direct involvement in its attack, or in military action launched by allied armed groups in countries from Lebanon to Yemen.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)