Iran executions surge in bid to ‘spread fear’: rights groups

PARIS: Iran hanged 75 percent more people in 2022 than the previous year, two rights groups said on Thursday, warning this “killing machine” risked putting even more people to death this year after protests rocked the country.

The figure of at least 582 executions was the highest for Iran since 2015 and well above the figure of 333 for 2021, the report by Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said.

Last year was marked by the eruption of nationwide protests sparked by the death in September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old ethnic Kurd who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rules for women.

The authorities responded with a crackdown that saw four men hanged in protest-related cases, executions that prompted an international outcry. IHR director Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam said that while the international reaction was keeping protest-related executions in check, Iran was pressing ahead with executions on other charges to deter people from protesting.

“We fear the number of executions will dramatically increase in 2023 if the international community does not react more,” he told AFP. “Every execution in Iran is political, regardless of the charges,” he added, describing those executed on drug or murder charges as the “low cost victims” of Iran´s “killing machine”.

He said that with over 150 executions in the first three months of this year alone, the overall total for 2023 risked being the highest in some two decades, exceeding even 2015 when, according to IHR, 972 people were put to death in Iran.

The report said that after the four men were executed on protest-related charges, 100 more protesters risk execution after being sentenced to death or charged with capital offences. It expressed alarm over a sharp rise in the number of drug-related executions after the protests erupted.

A fall in the number of drug-related executions -- driven by 2017 amendments to the anti-narcotics law -- had been behind a drop in the overall number of executions in Iran up to 2021.