Iran has dramatically escalated its use of the death penalty in the weeks following the April ceasefire that ended its war with the United States and Israel, with rights organizations warning that the Islamic Republic is using executions as a tool of political intimidation, according to a report by The New York Times published May 15.
Iranian authorities executed four prisoners this week alone on charges including espionage and terrorism, Iranian state media reported. But rights groups say the surge began earlier — in mid-March — and has accelerated sharply since the ceasefire took hold. Many of those executed were detained during the mass anti-government protests that shook Iran in January, when security forces killed thousands of demonstrators.
"Many of these executions follow extremely rapid judicial proceedings in which defendants have little or no access to legal counsel, face fundamentally unfair trials and are often convicted using forced confessions extracted under torture," said Omid Memarian, a senior analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based human rights think tank.
Among the most recent cases, Mohammad Abbasi — arrested alongside his daughter during the January protests on charges of killing a police officer — was executed Wednesday after state television broadcast what rights groups described as a forced confession. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization, said Abbasi was the 15th detainee from the January protests to be executed since mid-March. Also executed this week was Erfan Shakourzadeh, a 29-year-old university student convicted of collaborating with the CIA and Israel's Mossad, and Ehsan Afrashteh, charged with receiving Mossad training in Nepal and passing sensitive information to Israel.
Rights groups warn the crackdown is rooted in fear. Iran's economy has been devastated by the war, and public discontent — already at breaking point before the conflict began — has deepened. "Officials fear that any spark could trigger another wave of unrest," Memarian said. "The government is trying to project that it remains fully in control."
Amiry-Moghaddam urged the international community to make halting executions a condition of any future negotiations between Washington and Tehran. "Unless the political cost of executions for the Islamic Republic increases," he warned, "we will continue to witness daily executions in the weeks and months ahead."
Photo: Source