Amnesty slams Iran for executing 700 people this year

Amnesty worldwide voiced deep concerns over what it called the “unprecedented execution spike” in Iran. “If Iran’s authorities maintain this horrifying execution rate we are likely to see more than 1,000 state-sanctioned deaths by the year’s end”.

“An astonishing 694 people” were killed by the Iranian state between January 1 and July 15, said the report published Thursday on the Amnesty worldwide website.

Amnesty global Ireland Executive Direction Colm O’Gorman said the figure paints “a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale”.

It said death sentences in Iran were “particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality”.

Iran has been ranked second in an annual list of countries with the most executions since 2005, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, citing Amnesty statistics. Amnesty said the majority of those put to death have been convicted of drug related charges.

The statement described trials in Iran as “deeply flawed”, adding that “detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation”. Iran’s anti-narcotics law requires death sentences for trafficking more than 11 pounds of opiates and more than 66 pounds of cocaine, heroin and illegal synthetic drugs.

People gather opposite Downing St. during a protest against the execution of a young woman in Iran, in October of previous year.

For its part, Human Rights Watch has accused Saudi authorities of waging a “campaign of death” by executing over 100 people in the first six months of 2015, more than during the whole of past year.

“For years, Iranian authorities have used the death penalty to spread a climate of fear in a misguided effort to combat drug trafficking, yet there is not a shred of evidence to show that this is an effective method of tackling crime”, Mr Boumedouha said. In most cases, public executions are carried out using cranes, while in prisons they are usually carried out by having the object the prisoner is standing on kicked out from beneath their feet, IHR said.