A public execution in Iran
Despite mounting criticism from global leaders and rights activists, Iran executed seven more people on drugs and murder charges Thursday.
Human rights sources reported that Mohammad Daraie, Mehdi Salari, Majid Jafari, Ali Tayyeb, Ali Piri, Qaderbakhsh Dehani, and Abdol-Rasool Jamshidi were executed in Jiroft, Isfahan, Kerman, and Urmia prisons in the early hours of Thursday.
The number of executions has exceeded 110 in the last month.
Meanwhile, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) called on world leaders to increase pressure on the Iranian regime to end the flagrantly unlawful executions of protesters and others that are on the rise.
“The Islamic Republic is hanging young protesters—after torturing them into making 'confessions' and convicting them in sham trials—and targeting minorities for executions for lesser crimes, in order to cow its restive population into silence,” said the group in a letter delivered to 75 governments around the world on Wednesday.
“Unless world leaders join forces to raise the cost to the authorities in Iran of these state-sanctioned killings, which severely violate international laws governing the death penalty, the Islamic Republic’s killing machine will gather steam and more people will unjustly die on the gallows in Iran,” said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI Executive Director.
Over 500 protesters, including 71 children, have been killed by state security forces since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September. Untold others have been maimed and blinded, 22,000 people have been arrested, and raped, and many have been tortured. A UN expert on Iran has described these atrocities as crimes against humanity.