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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.
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Iran | Unnamed Man Executed for Drug Charges in Minab

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Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); September 23, 2023: State media have reported the execution of an unnamed man for drug-related in Minab Prison.

According to the Judiciary’s Mizan news agency, a man was executed in Minab Prison (Hormozgan province) on 23 September. 

The unnamed man was sentenced to death for charges of “efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth) through armed possession of drug that led to murder of policeman.”

The report states that the defendant had killed a policeman in the course of drug smuggling on 11 April 2023.

Drug-related executions have continuously risen every year for the past three years.

At least 206 people were executed for drug-related charges in the first six months of 2023, a 126% rise compared to the same period in 2022 when 91 were executed. 40 people were executed in the same period in 2021.

The number of drug executions dramatically dropped in 2018 following a 2017 Amendment to the Anti-Narcotics Laws. 

Consequently, drug executions ranged between 24-30 per annum between 2018-2020. 

The Amendment was reversed in practice in 2021 when executions increased ten-fold to 126 in 2021 and doubled again in 2022 with 256 drug-related executions. 

On 13 February 2023, IHRNGO reported a 94% rise in the number of drug-related executions in the year following the start of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in September 2022.

Source: Iran Human Rights, Staff, September 23, 2023


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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: Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran
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