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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

Iran | 4 Men Including Afghan National Secretly Executed in Mashhad

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Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); July 4, 2024: Yasser Ghafourian, Mohammad Houshiar Alizadeh and two unidentified men, one an Afghan national, were secretly executed in Mashhad Central Prison.

According to HRANA news agency, four men were executed in Mashhad (Vakil Abad) Central Prison on 30 June. 

Two of the men’s identities have been reported as Yasser Ghafourian and 47-year-old mohammad Houshiar Alizadeh. 

The other two unidentified men were an Afghan national and Quchan native.

All four men were sentenced to death for drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court. 

They were executed without their lawyers or families being notified, making them secret executions.

At the time of writing, their executions have not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

Drug-related executions have continuously risen every year since 2021. According to IHRNGO’s 2023 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 471 people were executed for drug-related charges, an 84% increase compared to 2022 (256) and about 18 times the average of drug-related executions in 2018-2020. In the first six months of 2024, at least 147 people were executed for the charges.

On 10 April 2024, 80+ Iranian and international organisations and groups called for joint action to stop drug-related executions, urging UNODC to make “any cooperation with the Islamic Republic contingent on a complete halt on drug-related executions.”

Source: Iran Human Rights, Staff, July 5, 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



Location: Mashhad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran
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