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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.

First Public Hanging in Iran in 2024

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Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); August 26, 2024: State media have reported the public hanging of an unnamed man for the murder of a lawyer on a street in Shahroud.

This is the first public execution in 2024.

Iran Human Rights warns about the return of public hangings to Iranian streets and urges the international community to deal seriously with this type of execution in Iran.

IHRNGO DIrector, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “Public hanging is an inhumane, cruel and degrading act that not only victimises the defendant  but also the general public. The international community must condemn this barbaric punishment in the strongest terms. We will witness more public executions if the international community doesn’t show an appropriate response.”

According to the state-run ISNA news agency and quoting the Semnan province head of judiciary, a man was publicly hanged in Shahroud on 26 August. The unnamed man was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for the murder of a lawyer.

Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, the Semnan province head of judiciary said: “According to the definitive ruling by Branch 49 of the Supreme Court, the late Mahmoudreza Jafar Aghayi’s murderer was sentenced to public execution for the crime of intentional murder with a hunting weapon.”

This is the first public hanging to take place in Iran in 2024. 2021 was the first year in over a decade during which no public executions were carried out by the Islamic Republic. This followed 2020 when only one execution was recorded, which was the lowest number since 2008, when Iran Human Rights started its systematic monitoring of executions in Iran. 

There is no indication that the decline in the number of public executions were the result of policy change, but rather a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. 

In 2022, public executions returned to the streets of Iran with two people publicly executed. That number rose to seven in 2024.

UPDATE: The executed man's identity has been established as 21-year-old Amirreza Ajam Akrami (photo). He was on death row for around a year.

Source: iranhr.net, Staff, August 26, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________








"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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