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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.

Four More Prisoners Executed in Iran

Authorities of the Islamic Republic executed four more prisoners over the weekend as death penalties continue to rise in the country.

The Iran Human Rights Organization reported that three inmates were executed on April 27 in Tabriz Prison for drug-related offenses.

The inmates were identified as Amir Moharrami, 36, Davoud Namyari, 33, and Sohrab Hokmabad. 

Mohammadi was convicted two years prior, while Namyari and Hokmabad's convictions were three years old.

The report also mentions that two other death row inmates, a man and a woman, were briefly moved to solitary confinement but later returned to the general prison population. 

The woman faced murder charges, while details about the man's charges remain undisclosed.

Iraj Sanambari, a 37-year-old man from Arak, was executed on April 27, 2024, at Arak Central Prison, according to a report by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. 

Sanambari had been convicted by the Arak Revolutionary Court on drug-related charges three years before his execution.

According to a report by Amnesty International, Iran has reached its highest level of death sentence execution in the last eight years, with the judiciary of the Islamic Republic executing 853 people in 2023 alone.

The report indicates that 481 executions, more than half of the total, were related to drug crimes. 

This marks an 89 percent rise in the death penalty compared to 2022, when 255 people were executed for drug-related offenses. The latest numbers also show a staggering 264 percent increase compared to 2021, when 132 individuals faced execution for similar charges.

Source: Iran Wire, Staff, April 29, 2024

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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



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