Iran Executes Kurdish Prisoner After 14 Years on Death Row

Kamran Sheikheh, a Kurdish religious prisoner held for over 14 years, was executed on Thursday morning.

Sheikheh was the last of seven defendants in a joint case to face execution.

The case originated from the 2008 assassination of Abdolrahim Tina, a mosque imam in Mahabad.

Sheikheh and six other individuals were arrested in early 2010 in connection with the alleged killing.

Initially sentenced to death by Tehran's Revolutionary Court, their case went through multiple judicial reviews.

The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the death sentence in February 2020.

Sheikheh's co-defendants were executed between November 2023 and May 2024.

They were identified as Ghasem Abasteh, Ayoub Karimi, Davoud Abdollahi, Farhad Salimi, Anvar Khezri, and Khosro Besharat.

The number of executions in Iran reached 853 in 2023, which is the highest recorded since 2015 and marks a 48 percent increase from 2022 in the aftermath of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

The spike in death penalties has continued into 2024, with at least 95 recorded executions by March 20, according to Amnesty International.

Source: Iran Wire, Staff, July 25, 2024

Iran hangs final defendant in 2008 case after 'unfair trial'

Paris (AFP) – Iranian authorities on Thursday executed Kurdish man Kamran Sheikheh, the last surviving defendant in a case linked to a Muslim cleric's killing in 2008, rights groups said.

Sheikheh, one of seven men first arrested in the case more than 14 years ago, was put to death in Urmia prison in northwestern Iran, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in separate statements.

Sheikheh's six co-defendants, also members of Iran's Kurdish minority, had all been executed in separate hangings since November 2023.

Amnesty International has said they had been sentenced to death "in a grossly unfair trial" that had been "marred by allegations of torture and other ill-treatment".

The seven were convicted on the capital crime of corruption on earth.

IHR described Sheikheh as a "political prisoner" who had been sentenced to death "based on torture-tainted confessions in a grossly unfair trial".

The execution "was unlawful according to international law and the Islamic republic's own laws, amounting to an extrajudicial killing," said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

HRANA said that the proceedings related to the killing of an imam of a mosque in the northwestern city of Mahabad in September 2008.

Sheikheh and the six others were arrested in connection with the killing in January and February 2010 and sentenced to death in 2018.

Activists say that Iran's use of the death penalty disproportionately targets members of the Kurdish and Baluch ethnic minorities in western and southeast Iran, who generally adhere to the Sunni strain of Islam rather than the Shiism otherwise dominant in Iran.

In one of the latest cases, rights groups said the Revolutionary Court of Tehran had sentenced Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish woman held in the capital's Evin prison, to death on charges of "rebellion".

Earlier this month, Iranian authorities have sentenced to death another Kurdish woman, Sharifeh Mohammadi, on the same charges over accusations of links to an outlawed Kurdish organisation.

IHR warned that Sheikheh's execution is part of a new surge in hangings in Iran marking the end of an apparent lull coinciding with snap presidential elections several weeks ago.

The rights group said at least 20 people have been executed since Saturday.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, July 25, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Tibetan protesters executed for Lhasa riot killings

Tibetan exiles have reported the first executions of those convicted for rioting last year in Lhasa, with at least two people put to death in a rare implementation of capital punishment in the restive region. Two Tibetans convicted of arson and sentenced to death in April were executed on Tuesday morning in Lhasa, reported The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which is based in the Indian town of Dharamsala—the home in exile of the Dalai Lama. It said that Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak had been sentenced to death for their part in setting fire to five shops in the Tibetan capital, killing seven people, in the riot that rocked Lhasa in March last year. Officials say that 21 people — including three Tibetan protesters — died in the violence, which embarrassed Beijing just as it was preparing to stage the Olympic Games and prompted a security crackdown across the Himalayan region. The body of Mr. Gyaltsen had been returned to his family and then submitted to a river burial—an un...

Iran: Delara Darabi has now been scheduled for execution

Delara Darabi has now been scheduled for execution, according to the Iranian newspaper Etemad on 18 April, according to another source on 20 April. She was convicted of murdering a relative when she was 17. Unless the Judiciary intervenes, she can now escape execution only if the woman’s entire family accept payment of diyeh, or blood money. One of the familly is said to be undecided. Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the use of the death penalty against people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing concern that Delara Darabi is in imminent danger of execution for a crime committed when she was under 18; - calling on the authorities to halt the execution of Delara Darabi immediately, and commute her death sentence; - reminding the authorities that Iran is a state part...

Florida | Former prison warden who oversaw executions urges corrections workers to not participate in them

Recently Florida carried out the execution of Dusty Spencer , a 74-year-old Marine veteran, for the murder of his wife, Karen, in 1992. It was the ninth Florida execution this year. For their own sake, I urge Florida’s corrections workers to refuse to carry out another one. Before you dismiss me as some soft lefty, you should know that I am an Air Force veteran. I voted for Ron DeSantis for governor twice—and for Donald Trump for president three times.

Iran: Prisoner of conscience Mohsen Amir Aslani hanged for ‘different interpretation of Quran’

Mohsen Amir Aslani NCRI - The Iranian Resistance calls on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council, as well as all international human rights organizations to strongly condemn the execution of prisoner of conscience Mr Mohsen Amir Aslani on charges of “corruption on earth; changing Islam’s principles and secondary laws; and new interpretation of Quran”. It further calls for adoption of binding decisions against the growing number of arbitrary executions by the religious fascism ruling Iran. Mr. Amir Aslani, 37, who had been in prison since eight years ago, was once sentenced to four years in prison which was later commuted to twenty-eight months. However, as more fabricated charges were brought against him, the head henchman Judge Salavati condemned him to death. The Iranian regime has refraining from handing over the body of this prisoner to his family through stonewalling and offering contradictory answers to them. The execution...

Iraq: Saddam Hussein Execution was Moved Forward Because of Gaddafi Rescue Plans, Judge Says

Saddam Hussein's execution on December 30, 2006 The execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was accelerated due to the belief that the then Libyan leader, Muammar El-Gaddafi, had a plan to rescue him from prison, Judge Mounir Haddad revealed today. Hadad, who presided over the trial of Hussein, revealed to the Al-Arabiya Satellite Channel Point of Order program new details of the trial against the former president and his last moments before being hanged, including the 'health and welfare' votes for the magistrate himself . According to his testimony, the application of the death penalty to Saddam Hussein was precipitated because authorities knew that El-Gaddafi - later murdered in 2011 - was allegedly trying to bribe US guards who guarded him to rescue him from prison. He added that, contrary to previous reports from the local and US press, former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gave his 'implicit approval' for Hussein's execution, an...

Tennessee Reduced Training in IV Placement in New Lethal Injection Protocol

The protocol that took effect in 2025 sheds new light on Tony Carruthers’ botched execution, when Dr. Mark Fowler spent nearly an hour trying, and failing, to place a secondary IV line Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol adopted a year and a half ago appears to include reduced training in IV placement. That’s the part of the process prison staff failed to complete last month before aborting the execution of Tony Carruthers. Filings from ongoing litigation over the protocol show concerns about the executioners’ training and qualifications aren’t new.

Halfway through the year, Saudi Arabia has already executed nearly 100 people

Almost 100 people executed so far this year as dozens more remain on death row for drug-related offences Saudi Arabian authorities have executed nearly 100 people so far this year, including at least 61 for drug-related offences, the latest of which was on 18 June. In response, Dana Ahmed, Middle East Researcher at Amnesty International, said today: “It is halfway through the year and Saudi Arabia has executed nearly 100 people, a grim milestone exposing the authorities’ unconscionable and unlawful use of the death penalty. Of the 96 people put to death already in 2026, an astounding 61 were executed for drug-related offences; 39 of them were foreign nationals and 22 Saudi nationals.

U.S. | Lethal injections are more likely to be botched, experts say

Tony Carruthers, a Memphis man on death row, is one of hundreds of people in the U.S. whose executions did not go as planned When the Tennessee Department of Corrections botched Tony Carruthers’ execution, it wasn’t surprising to Austin Sarat. He’s been researching and writing about “state killings” for decades. “Of all of the methods of execution used in the United States over the last 140 years, lethal injection has the highest rate of being botched,” said Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College. He said an execution is botched when it deviates from standard operating procedure or official legal protocol.

Florida executes Dusty Ray Spencer

74-year-old man becomes oldest inmate executed in modern Florida history A 74-year-old man convicted of fatally stabbing his wife became the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern history on Thursday, and the state is scheduled to execute another 74-year-old inmate next month. Dusty Ray Spencer was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Spencer was convicted of the 1992 stabbing death of his wife Karen.

As Idaho Reinstates Firing Squad, Volunteers Sought for Executions

The state becomes the first in the U.S. to make the firing squad the standard method of capital punishment Idaho is opening a new phase in the administration of capital punishment in the United States, returning to the firing squad as the default method of execution. The decision reintroduces a system that has been abolished or abandoned in most of the country and is now being reorganized through a formal and highly structured framework. The new death penalty protocol State authorities have begun recruiting volunteer law enforcement officers to take part in executions. The operational model includes three primary shooters assigned to carry out the execution, two alternates, and one operations coordinator. All participants will remain anonymous, known only to the prison warden and deputy warden.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog