Iran Executions Increase Since Election
(AP Photo/Halabisaz)
The message of swift, decisive "justice" delivered by Iran's leaders is clear, and comes at a time when those leaders, both political and religious, are wrestling to overcome an image of internal dispute and reassert their authority following post-election violence that left at least 30 people dead and hundreds jailed.
Tehran's deputy prosecutor, Mahmoud Salarkia, said the 24 were hanged at the notorious Karaj prison on July 30th. "Their execution was approved by the supreme court," said Salarkia, without naming the prisoners.
Iran has killed at least 219 prisoners already this year, according to a tally from the French news agency AFP, and the pace of the executions seems to have increased amid the postelection turmoil.
President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad was sworn in on Wednesday for a second term after his purported land-slide reelection on June 12.
Since then, Iranian police and Basij paramilitary members have cracked down hard on thousands of opposition supporters who took to the streets with their claim the vote was rigged on a dramatic scale by Ahmadinejad and his supporters.
Also since then, and officially unrelated, Iran has executed at least 44 drug convicts, 19 Baluch minorities convicted of supporting a terrorist group, and possibly two young men sentenced for murders they allegedly committed before the age of 18.
Thus far, international outrage over the supposedly coincidental uptick in executions amid the postelection turmoil has been muted, at best.
The European Union condemned the July 30 executions and said in a statement that the 27-member bloc was "concerned about the continued large-scale use of the death penalty in Iran, including the repeated incidence of collective executions during the past month."
"The Presidency continues to call on the Iranian authorities to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions," it added.
The United States government has made no official remarks on the sanctioned killings.
Iran came second only to China in the number of prisoners executed during 2008, with a reported total of 246. China is believed to have killed as many as 5,000 of its convicts, but that number is unconfirmed. In the United States, by comparison, 37 people were executed in state death chambers, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Iran did execute 29 people convicted of drug trafficking and other various crimes in July of 2008, but this summer's killings come after an apparent push within the Islamic Republic's judiciary to reduce the application of the death penalty.
According to a report by CNN, a spokesman for the judiciary — which is handpicked and approved by the clerical leadership — announced a move to curtail "unnecessary executions" in May this year, the month before the presidential elections.
"Certain measures have been sent to parliament for approval. In particular, regarding cases involving unnecessary executions. Those laws are in the process of being changed... We hope to see a reduction of such sentences," Iranian media quoted a judiciary spokesman as saying, according to the CNN story. The official cited "a huge development in our laws in recent years."
Progress on those reforms, it would seem, has been postponed. A worrying delay as three ill-advised American backpackers sit in an Iranian jail after apparently crossing the border illegally.
Not to mention the 500 or so Iranian dissidents, academics and journalists still awaiting their fate in prisons across the country.
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Iran may get priceless little right politically in their country but executing these types is a step in the right direction.
Have you watched prison tv shows showing the warehousing of the most dangerous people in our country? They should be hanging from a rope!
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219! Dang, their express lane is quicker than the one in Texas.
...Iranians don't have prison garb?
"When people hang, the feet kick and flail and the muscles will relax and the toes will extend downward..."
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Not if they are hung "properly". If the hanging is done correctly the neck will be broken and the spinal cord completely disrupted so there would be no motor function below the area of disruption, hopefully above C3.
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Of the three groups described above, drug convicts, terrorist and murderers, I can't think of who to sympathize with. Can anyone help
At least the US didn't make any official statements about this seeing as it too likes to kill it's citizens...
Republicans don't hate Iran, anymore than Iran hates America. It always comes down to the leaders. That has always been the problem with many society's and regimes throughout history.
The leadership of any entity can create instability within and outside of their own borders. George Bush is and was not a bad guy in the least. He like so many others felt the need to protect OUR interests and some of his methods were not the best, but he did what he felt needed to be done. George Bush has always been a patriot and would probably give you his shirt if you asked him. He has a great heart, but he knows being the leader of this country had to protect us at all costs.
Everything comes at a cost and he made some drastic considerations and measures to attain optimum results. Sometimes optimum results is all you can work for, because the options are not always many.