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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 Executes Four Baluch and Afghan Prisoners

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Iranian authorities executed at least four prisoners in Yazd Central Prison on Monday. 

The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reports that the executed individuals included two Baluch men and two Afghan nationals.

The Baluch prisoners have been identified as Abdol Rauf Shahbakhsh, 33, and Abdolrahman Damani, 34. Both of them hail from Zahedan. 

The men had previously been convicted on drug-related charges.

The two Afghan nationals, identified as Insar Eftekharoldin and Mahmood Salim, were executed on homicide charges. 

Their ages were not disclosed in the report.

The report indicates that the prisoners were handed the death penalty for crimes related to drugs and murder.

Iranian state media and government-affiliated news outlets have not reported on these executions. 

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 increase in the death penalty compared to 2022, when 255 people were executed for drug-related offenses.

The latest numbers also show a 264 percent increase compared to 2021, when 132 individuals faced execution for similar charges.

Source: Iran Wire, Staff, August 20, 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: Yazd, Yazd Province, Iran
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