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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 | Public execution in Shahroud

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The Iranian judiciary, early this morning, Monday, August 26, 2024, carried out the death sentence of a prisoner who had previously been sentenced to public execution for the murder of a judicial attorney in Shahroud county. 

The second branch of the criminal court in Semnan province had issued the death sentence for this defendant publicly.

The ISNA news agency, quoting Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, the head of Semnan Province Judiciary, wrote: ‘Based on the final verdict issued by Branch 49 of the Supreme Court, the murderer Mahmoud Reza Jafar Aghaei was sentenced to public retribution for intentional murder by shooting with a hunting rifle, which the case’s sentence entered the enforcement stage this morning after legal proceedings.’

In August 2022, Mahmoud Reza Jafar Aghaei, a judicial attorney, was shot dead in front of his wife and child on one of the streets in Shahroud county. 

Four of the perpetrators of the murder were arrested, and the main suspect was also arrested in September 2022.

Rasoul Koohpayehzadeh, the defense attorney of the victim, had stated: ‘The accused person, by paying a sum of money, issued the order for the murder and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in Iran Shahr Prison on charges of complicity in the murder.’

Public execution is inconsistent with international human rights laws


According to documents from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, public executions are in violation of the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and constitute a departure from Article 7 of this Covenant, which states that ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’ 

And it is also a violation of Article 6 of this Convention which emphasizes that ‘Every human being has the inherent right to life.’

Public executions are one of the issues that have always been criticized by human rights organizations and the United Nations, and Iran has been repeatedly urged to change and halt this approach both in laws and in practice.

Source: iran-hrm.com, 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: Shahrud, Semnan Province, Iran
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