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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 | Prisoner Executed in Ahvaz While on Hunger Strike

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Iran Human Rights (IHR); January 28, 2021: Prisoner Ali Motayyeri, who according to Iranian media, was sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder with a religious motive,” has been executed in Sheiban Prison, Ahvaz.

According to state-run Tasnim news agency, a prisoner named Ali Motayyeri was executed at Sheiban Prison this morning. He had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) and efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth) for murder.

In a statement on Ali Motayyeri’s execution, the Judiciary of Khuzestan Province wrote: “In a terrorist attack on 7 May 2018, Ali Motayyeri, a terrorist member of ISIS, attacked the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) base in Sheiban, Khuzestan province and as a result, martyred two active IRGC members on the base named Bashir Hamidi and Hassan Karoun-Bahmanshir.”

Around nine months after his arrest, Branch One of the Ahvaz Criminal Court sentenced Ali to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for the murder of the IRGC members, Bashir Hamidi and Hassan Karoud.

Informed sources have told IHR: “Ali Motayyeri and a few other prisoners had been on a hunger strike and sewn their lips in protest to his unfair death sentence and the prison guards’ treatment of prisoners since January 23."

Ali’s execution in the Arab region of Ahvaz comes at a time when executions and crackdowns have intensified in the Baluch and Kurdish regions in the past few weeks.

As there are no legal distinctions made between murder and manslaughter, whether voluntary or involuntary in Iran, those charged under the umbrella term of “premeditated murder” will receive the death penalty regardless of intent and the circumstances.

Source: iranhr.net, Staff, January 28, 2021


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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: Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province, Iran
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