Iran: 500 prisoners on death row in the holy city of Mashhad

Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, Mashhad's prosecutor said that "500 prisoners are facing the gallows." This is the 2nd time in less than a month that shocking news of increasing number of death row inmates surface in Iran.

The 1st was that of the 150 prisoners soon to face gallows in the southern city of Dashtistan in the coastal province of Bushehr.

Colonel Ardeshir Gholami, chief of the State Security Forces (SSF) mullahs' suppressive police -- in Dashtistan in an interview with the state-run daily Payam Asaloyeh, stated while defending the public execution of 4 prisoners in a Borazjan's city squares also in Bushehr, on July 10, that "the people of this city have more than 150 murderers in jail facing the gallows. The debate is on publicizing the executions. People will see that there is order in the country and that the law will punish whoever commits a murder."

While the state-run media is calling public executions a violation of an order issued by Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, the chief of mullahs' judiciary, the governor of the city of Dashtistan in recent days revealed that the executions have been conducted in public after securing a permit from Shahroudi.

Gholamreza Keshtgar, the governor of Dashtistan, told Payam Asaloyeh, "Execution in public has been banned unless approved by an order from the chief of the judiciary, or in special cases. In the city of Dashtistan, the authorities demanded a public execution and Shahroudi permitted."

On January 30, the speaker of the judiciary, 5 months before the execution of 4 prisoners in Borazjan, held a press conference where he discussed an order related to the ban on public executions by Shahroudi.

According to Gholami, in July alone, 12 prisoners were executed in the Borazjan with a population of 250,000.

(source: National Council of Resistance of Iran - Foreign Affairs Committee)

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