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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.

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

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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



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