By Deutsche Welle
08 Aug 2024, 01:40 AM EDT
Iran hanged 29 people on Wednesday, 26 of them in a mass executionwho had been convicted of crimes such as murder, drug trafficking or rape, announced the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR).
According to this Norway-based organization, The mass execution took place in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, near Tehran. The other three men were hanged in another prison in the same city.
Other human rights groups, such as the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) and the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), both in the United States, confirmed the execution of at least twenty people in Karaj.
Iran is the country in the world that executes the second most people each year, only behind China, according to Amnesty International figures.
This year, 313 people have been executed, the IHR said. But a mass hanging of this magnitude has not taken place since 2009, it added.
“Without an immediate response from the international community, hundreds of people could fall victim to the Islamic Republic’s killing machine in the coming months,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the NGO.
Amid global distractions, the regime in #Iran carried out a mass execution of at least 29 prisoners this morning.
Khamenei’s regime exploits this moment to act, while the Iranian people pay the ultimate price.
The only answer is to bring an end to the Islamic Republic. pic.twitter.com/CvElLQVuoe
— National Union for Democracy in Iran (@NUFDIran) August 7, 2024
Method of intimidation
Human rights activists accuse Iran of using the death penalty as a method of intimidation following protests sparked by the death in custody in 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested for violating the women’s dress code.
On the eve, Authorities executed a person convicted of murder during the protests in Kermanshah prison in the west of the country.
The Kurdish-majority region was one of the epicentres of the protest movement that erupted after Amini’s death.
The executed man, Gholamreza Rasaei, was convicted of the November 2022 murder of a colonel of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, according to the judicial system’s press organ Mizan Online.
He was executed in secret, without his family or lawyer being informed. His family was forced to bury his body in a remote area far from their home, according to Amnesty International.
The NGO denounced that the sentence was based on a confession obtained under torture and said that the execution evidenced Tehran’s determination to “use the death penalty as a tool of political repression to sow fear in the population.”
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