Iran executed 36 citizens in January: report
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Reports compiled by a Kurdish rights organization indicate the Iranian government had executed at least 36 citizens in January alone on convictions of illicit drug trade and premeditated murder.
The notorious Rajai Shahr Prison, located south of the capital of Tehran, carried out 13 out of 36 of the sentences while the rest were implemented in other facilities across the country, Hengaw – a group that mostly writes on human rights violations involving Kurds in Iran – reported on Tuesday.
The report was a compilation of data from organizations dedicated to writing on human rights issues in Iran.
A separate report from Hengaw, using its statistics from 2019, showed that the government had executed at least 52 Kurds from the provinces of Ilam, Kermanshah, Lorestan, West Azerbaijan, and Khorasan. This was a 26 percent reduction in reported numbers from 2018.
In recent years, Iran has proven to be one of the leading nations in carrying out the death penalty against its citizens. Of the 993 people executed globally in 2017, 507 of them were in Iran, according to Amnesty International.
From 2014 to 2017, Iran executed at least 25 people for crimes they committed while underage, according to Amnesty and Iran Human Rights. And despite being a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which bans executing child offenders, Iran continues to sentence children to death.
In 2018, an Amnesty International report said the country had executed upward to 250 citizens, with similar numbers expected to have taken place in 2019.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany