Iran carrying out executions at 'horrifying pace,' rights groups say
Iran has set out on an "execution spree" this year, putting to death at least 251 people during the first six months of 2022, a pace two rights groups have described as "horrifying".
The rapid rate of the executions could soon see Iran surpass the 314 death penalties it carried out in the whole of 2021, the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran and London-based Amnesty International said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
The organisations' report said that 251 hangings have been confirmed this year, up until 30 June, but the real number is likely even higher given the secrecy around the number of death sentences carried out.
At least 146 of those executed had been convicted of murder, "amid well-documented patterns of executions being systematically carried out following grossly unfair trials," while 86 were hanged for drug-related offences, the report said.
One man was executed in public in Fars province on 23 July, in the first public execution in two years.
Diana Eltahawy, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said the Iranian authorities have executed at least one person a day on average between January and June 2022.
"The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life," she said.
"Iran's staggering execution toll for the first half of this year has chilling echoes of 2015, when there was another shocking spike."
Mass executions
Authorities have regularly carried out mass executions in prisons across Iran, the report said, highlighting Zahedan prison in Sistan and Baluchistan province and Raja'i Shahr prison in Alborz province. Twelve people were executed in each prison in a single day in June.
Citing an informed source, the report said authorities at Raja'i Shahr prison have been executing five people a week on average this year, and in some cases carrying out 10 executions a week.
Raja'i Shar prison has one of the largest numbers of people on death row in the country.
The source, interviewed by Amnesty International in June, said that recent statements by Iranian officials acknowledging the problem of prison overcrowding "have raised widespread fears among prisoners that the rise in executions is related to official efforts to reduce prisoner numbers".
The rights groups also expressed alarm that over a quarter of those executed so far this year were members of Iran's Baluchi ethnic minority, with over half of the executions related to drug offences.
The Baluchi minority makes up about just five percent of Iran's population.
"The disproportionate use of the death penalty against Iran's Baluchi minority epitomises the entrenched discrimination and repression they have faced for decades," said Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights director Roya Boroumand.
At least 280 people were executed in 2021, the highest since 2017, with more than 80 of the executions related to drug offences, compared to 25 in 2020, according to the UN.
Wednesday's report said the rise in executions last year coincided with the rise of the former judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, to the presidency, and the appointment of former intelligence minister Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei as the new head of the judiciary.
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