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.
Thus far, Iran has killed at least 219 prisoners this year, according to a tally from the French news agency AFP, and the pace of the executions seems to have increased since 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.
