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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.

Amid Rising Executions, Iran Puts Three More to Death

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The Islamic Republic of Iran has carried out the executions of three more prisoners amid a rise in the use of the death penalty.

A prisoner previously sentenced to death on drug-related charges was executed in Urmia Prison on Wednesday morning.

Human rights groups identified the prisoner as Mohammad Daghestani, who was arrested on drug charges and later sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic's judiciary.

On Tuesday, the death sentences of two prisoners, Mohammad Karamizadeh and Esmail Javadi, were carried out at Ghezel Hesar Prison.

Each had been sentenced to death for separate cases of premeditated murder.

According to a report by Amnesty International, Iran has reached its highest level of death sentence executions 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 per cent rise in death penalties for drug-related offenses compared to 2022 when 255 people were executed.

The latest numbers also show a staggering 264 per cent increase compared to 2021, when 132 individuals faced execution on similar charges.

Source: Iran Wire, Staff, August 21, 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: Iran
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