Iran Human Rights Organization: At Least 273 People Were Executed in Iran in 2018

According to the annual report on the death penalty issued by the Iran Human Rights Organization, at least 273 people were executed in Iran in 2018

The eleventh annual report on the death penalty by the Iran Human Rights Organization was published on Tuesday, March 27, 2019. According to the report, executions in Iran in 2018 decreased by 48 percent compared to the previous year, however, 273 people were still executed in Iran that year.

In this report, the most important factor in reducing executions was stated to be the implementation of new amendments to the Islamic Republic’s drug-related laws, although in the last three months of 2018, at least 24 people were hanged for drug-related offenses. The number of drug-related executions in 2017 was reported to be at least 230 people.

Also, from these statistics, only 93 cases, totaling 34 percent of these executions, were announced through official sources of the Islamic Republic, and 66 percent of these executions were not reported by the Iranian government in 2018.

However, public executions continue to persist in Iran, with 13 such cases reported in 2018.

At least 6 juvenile offenders were also among those executed this year. The execution of at least five women in 2018 was recorded in Iran.

For years, lack of transparency in the implementation of the death penalty has caused human rights concerns in Iran, to the extent that human rights experts and the United States have repeatedly protested widespread human rights violations in Iran.

Previously, the U.S. Secretary of State, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s revolution, referred in a tweet to the deterioration of economic and human rights conditions over the past forty years in Iran.

Source: Voice of America