More than 500 people already executed by Iran in 2022: report

Nicosia, Cyprus:

Iran has so far executed more than 500 people in 2022, far more than in all of last year, a rights group said Monday.

The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights told AFP that at least 504 people have been executed in Iran this year and it is still confirming more cases of people allegedly hanged.

The figure comes as concerns grow that authorities will make widespread use of the death penalty against people involved in the anti-regime protests that have erupted in Iran since September.

The IHR count includes four people put to death on Sunday, according to official media, on charges of collaborating with Israeli intelligence.

The rights group said they were executed at Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj outside Tehran — also known as Gohardasht — within just seven months of being arrested.

“These individuals were sentenced to death without due process or due process behind the closed doors of the Revolutionary Court,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement. “Their verdicts lacked all legal validity.”

“These executions are designed to instill societal fear and divert public attention from the failings of the Islamic Republic’s intelligence services,” he added.

Another of those recently hanged was a woman who was executed on Saturday in Dastgerd in central Iran and accused of killing her father-in-law, IHR said.

Human rights groups have raised the alarm over the number of women executed in Iran, often on charges of murdering partners or relatives in abusive relationships.

IHR said the number of those executed this year is already the highest in five years.

According to the data, at least 333 people were executed in 2021, a 25 percent increase from 267 in 2020.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, estimated the number of recorded executions in Iran last year at 314 — higher than any other country in the world, it says, noting that no such data is available for China, where it believes annual executions number in the thousands. walk.

Six people have already been sentenced to death over Iran’s protests in what IHR calls “mock trials without access to their lawyers and due process”.

It says 26 people, including three minors, are currently facing charges that could lead to their hanging.

Authorities have described the accused as rioters who attacked security forces and public buildings, but the circumstances of the cases are disputed by activists.

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