Iran: 2011 Report on the Death Penalty

March 4, 2012: Iran Human Rights (IHR) presented its annual report on the death penalty in 2011 in Iran. The report was presented in press conferences at the Italian Senate, Paris City Hall and University of Oslo last week.

According to monitoring carried out by Iran Human Rights, an NGO based in Norway which works against the death penalty in the Islamic Republic, in 2011, Iran carried out at least 676 executions, a frightening increase over preceding years, and with a sharp increase in executions in public. The IHR’s report is primarily based on the information published by the official Iranian sources and different independent sources: 416 (62%) of the 676 executions have been reported by official Iranian news agencies or high-ranking officials within the Iranian judiciary.

IHR emphasizes that the actual number of the executions in Iran is probably much higher than the figures included in its annual report.

In 2011, IHR received a large number of reports about executions not reported by the Iranian authorities. Execution reports from more than 15 different prisons throughout Iran have been confirmed. Some of the unofficial executions are not announced by official media, but the lawyers and family members of the prisoners were notified prior to the execution. In other cases, executions are categorized as “secret” since neither the lawyers or family members were informed before the execution took place. More than 70 additional executions were not included in IHR’s report, due to difficulties in confirming some of the details.

According to the official Iranian sources, a majority of those who were executed were convicted of drug-related offences (71%), followed by rape (13%), murder (7%), Moharebeh (enemy of God) (4%), immoral acts or acts against chastity (1%), and armed robbery (1%). For 3% of the executions announced by official Iranian media no charges were mentioned.

At least 15 women were executed in 2011. Executions of 13 of these women were not announced by the Iranian authorities.

In 2011, public executions have more than tripled with at least 65 people being executed in public. This is the highest number of public executions in more than 10 years.

The execution of child offenders continued into 2011, in open violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which it is a co-signatory. At least 4 people were hanged, after being convicted of offences they had allegedly committed when they were under the age of 18. Two of them were under 18 years of age at the time they were executed. Two other juvenile offenders were executed in 2011 according to unofficial sources but IHR hasn’t confirmed their age yet.

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Source: IHR, March 3, 2012

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