IRAN: The death penalty 01/09/2011
Executive Summary
Iran executes more people per year than any other country in the world except China.
From 1 January to 8 July 2011 the number of executions documented in Iran totalled 361. However, the Iranian Government does not announce many executions, therefore the true figure is difficult to determine. It is generally believed, however, that true figures are far higher than those recorded. These current figures, if projected for twelve months, would produce a notional annual total for 2011 of 619 executions, which would exceed the total for any previous year. Most recently, from 3 to 8 September, 2011, fourteen prisoners were reportedly hanged in Orumieh, Kerman, Ahwaz, and Qazvin.
The known executions in 2010 included five women and one juvenile offender. Death sentences were imposed for sexual offences, political actions, espionage, and drug smuggling, as well as for armed robbery, and murder. Notable death sentences in 2010 were also meted out to individuals convicted of apostasy (abandoning Islam), insulting the sanctity of Islam, enmity against God (moharebeh), and creating pornographic internet sites. However, some of these death sentences have not yet been implemented. At the end of 2010 at least seventeen members of Iran‟s Kurdish minority, including one woman, were on death row awaiting execution for alleged political offences, after unfair trials for moharebeh.
More than 4,000 Afghans are thought to be in Iranian jails, the majority of them for drug-related offences, facing the death penalty. Concern for Afghan prisoners grew in March 2010 following the visit of a group of Afghan MPs to Iran. Following this visit, Afghan MP Taj Mohammed Mojahed said that officials from the Iranian Supreme Court had told them that 5,630 Afghans were in prison, with more than 3,000 sentenced to death.
Of current concern is the case of Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, an Iranian house church leader who is facing the death penalty for apostasy. Having been imprisoned since 2009, his final hearing is due on 25 September 2011 and observers are increasingly worried that the death penalty may be implemented immediately after this hearing as an “example” to other persons who have abandoned Islam. International intervention is urgently needed on his behalf. The Islamic Republic of Iran must be remineded of its obligations under international law to protect, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right of everyone to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” for all of its citizens including “freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
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