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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Iran: Public Execution of a Person with Mental Illness

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Public execution in Iran (file photo)
Iran Human Rights (IHR); November 30, 2018: A prisoner was hanged in public at Iranian city of Taft (Central Iran) on Thursday, November 29. 

The man was suffering from mental disability and had previously been hospitalized in a Psychiatric hospital, according to the Iranian media reports.

According to Iranian media, the man whose first name identified as Kamran, was suffering from mental disability and was hospitalized in a Psychiatric hospital before committing a murder. 

Kamran was 19 when he murdered a 36 old woman; and told the prosecutors that he loved the victim. “I expressed my love to her and she refused. I decided to take revenge,” the prisoner had said in his confessions.

According to the Yazd Province Judiciary Courthouse’s Public Relations department, Kamran was hanged in public in Taft city,  on the morning of Thursday, November 29.

UN human rights experts, including the former Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, had previously drawn particular attention to continued reports of public executions. “A dehumanising effect on both the victim and those who witness the execution” and ultimately reinforced the “already cruel, inhuman and degrading nature of the death penalty,” UN experts said.

Iran Human Rights (IHR) warns against the new wave of executions in Iran and urges the UN, EU, and countries with diplomatic relations with Iran to react immediately and accordingly.

“We demand the halt of all executions, especially public executions which are inhumane and disdainful, and increase the level of violence in society, ”IHR spokesperson and director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, emphasised, “At the first anniversary of the nationwide protests in Iran, we are concerned that the Iranian authorities will use more executions and terror to avoid new protests.”

IHR has previously reported about other cases where people with mental illness have been executed in Iran.

Source: iranhr.net, November 30, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Taft, Yazd Province, Iran
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