Iran has recently engaged in a spree of executions, including 29 killings in one day. The development has prompted warnings from international rights advocates that, due to a lack of legal guarantees or due process, dozens more could find themselves on death row.

Iran Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation that tracks the country’s use of capital punishment, says there’s been an increase of over 100 executions in August, bringing the total in the first eight months of the year to 418, a significant increase on 2023. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group in exile based in France and Albania, since President Masoud Pezeshkian took office at the end of July, there have been 214 executions. Rights groups suggest that, if this continues, Iran will earn the dubious title of ‘world’s worst executioner’.

Of the executions carried out in August, 46 were for drug-related charges, 50 for murder, three for rape and one for the national security-related charges. New York-based Human Rights Watch noted that there were 29 executions reported in one day in August. Iran also undertook the first public execution this year, hanging 21-year-old man Amirreza Ajam Akrami, in the central city of Shahrud. 

The report noted that the same rationale used during the inception of the Iranian revolution was still responsible for Iran’s patchy legal record, particularly the broad use of national security offences such moharebeh (war against God) ) and efsad-e fel-arz (spreading corruption on Earth) – two terms of religious connotations that are particular to the ruling Iranian mullahs. 

The report prompted angry reaction in Iran with Iranian officials going as far as accusing Rehman of complicity in terrorism after he attended a meeting in Paris of the Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). Kazem Gharibabadi, the Secretary of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, said Rehman's report was ‘full of lies and baseless accusations.’ Rehman said on the contrary he conducted his job away from politics.

‘I am greatly honoured to have served for six years as the Special Rapporteur. I worked on the Iran mandate on a completely unpaid basis, acting with great integrity and absolute commitment and in an independent capacity, completely impartially, professionally and free from any politicizations,’ he says. ‘I played an important role in reporting human rights violations and led several accountability campaigns including one for the establishment of the historic UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in November 2022.’

Tehran also denies committing any rights violations and argues that defendants in Iranian courts are tried, and potentially executed, only for serious crimes related to ‘premeditated murder,’ ‘drug-related charges’ and for ‘rape’ in fair and transparent trials.

Numbers tell a worrying story though. Tehran executed at least 834 people in 2023, more than each of the previous seven years, making the country responsible for 74 per cent of all recorded executions worldwide, according to Amnesty International. The UN says that, in 2022, 582 were executed, a 75 per cent increase from the previous year, which saw 333 executions.

Over the past 14 years, there has been a total of more than 8,200 executions in Iran, according to the Iran Human Rights. ‘That is one to two executions every single day,’ says director Amiry-Moghaddam. ‘It gives an average of more than 600 yearly executions.’ 

Richard Goldstone, Honorary President of the IBAHRI tells Global Insight, that Iran was evidently using the death penalty as retribution for political activism. ‘Clearly this use of the death sentence is calculated to intimidate freedom of expression and political activism,’ he says. ‘This is a political excuse and there can be no doubt that the death sentence is calculated to instil fear in those who oppose the autocratic regime.’

Calls for immediate reform

Abolitionist supporters, who oppose the death penalty because of its inherent cruelty, have urged Iran to stop escalating the use of the death penalty and spare lives. Among their demands is an immediate reform of the country’s judiciary because of the country’s notorious absence of separation of powers. 

Giada Girelli, senior analyst at Harm Reduction International, notes that Iran has so far faced few or no international consequences for its maximum punishment policy. ‘Despite some words of condemnation, mostly by UN human rights mechanisms, other actors – such as fellow governments and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime  - are mostly silent,’ she says. ‘The geopolitical context is also different, meaning the death penalty may simply not be a priority in the diplomacy with Iran. All this implicitly sends a signal to Iran that executions can continue, with no political consequences.’

In his report, Rehman called upon the international community to establish an investigative and accountability mechanism to probe crimes under international law with a view to future criminal prosecution of perpetrators in Iran. He says the mechanism should examine what he called ‘atrocity crimes’, including ‘summary, arbitrary and extra-judicial executions’.

‘I have called for an investigative and accountability mechanism which would investigate and examine all the available evidence as presented in my report and in the UN documentation and other sources, including evidence from the witnesses,’ Rahman says. ‘This evidence would then be available to be used for future criminal prosecutions of the perpetrators of international crimes.’

Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights says the international community needs to ratchet up its campaign against the death penalty. ‘The only means that can be used is naming and shaming these regimes that still use the death sentence and, if possible, for sanctions to be imposed on those governments that use the death sentence to intimidate its citizens into compliance,’ says Amiry-Moghaddam.
 

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