Crumbs of human rights

Mohammad Ali Taheri, the founder of a new spiritual group Erfan-e Halgheh, has been on hunger strike for a few days. He is protesting the limbo his case is in. His five-year prison sentence is about to terminate soon, however, the court that had previously sentenced him to death has resumed its investigation into his case. Mohammad Ali Taheri has been held in solitary confinement for the past nearly five years in Tehran’s Evin Prison. His contact with his inmates and the outside world has been very limited. The only connections that have given him hope and energy are the weekly meetings with his wife and the irregular calls the prison authorities allow him to have with his family. Mohammad Ali Taheri always looks forward to these events, as he doesn’t have anything else to occupy himself with: he hasn’t even had access to books, a piece of paper or a pen for a very long time. Imprisoned for his teachings and belief   Mohammad Ali Taheri established the Erfan-e Halgheh ...

In the past month, Amnesty issued several updates on juvenile offenders, who were about to face the gallows. Because of that, names like Salar Shadizadi, Saman Naseem, Alireza Shahi or Milad Azimi might all sound familiar to you – unfortunately. There have been some good news and some bad news, as well. As of the good, the execution of Salar Shadizadi has been postponed. This is to allow the murder victim’s family to pardon him. However, Salar remains at risk. The authorities should grant him a fair retrial, making sure that there will not be a recourse to the death penalty. As of the bad news: sadly, Alireza Shahi , a 25-year-old man was executed in the morning of 24 November 2015.  By now, Saman Naseem has become a person, whose fate we have been following closely. In this year’s Write for Rights campaign, you might already have signed a card for him or you might do so with your local group within the next days. Amnesty International is asking the Iranian regime ...

An ideal solution for the regime to increase the number of the population would be: Not to sacrifice more lives. Amnesty International has received reports of more than 700 executions so far this year. Having a look at the numbers of juvenile offenders, it shows that 75 executions took place between 2005 and 2015 . This year itself, at least three juvenile offenders have faced the death penalty. More than 160 are believed to be currently on death row in prisons across the country.  Fatemeh Salbehi was one of the recent cases. The 23-year-old woman was hanged on 13 October for a crime she allegedly committed when she was 17. She had been sentenced to death in May 2010 for the murder of her 30-year-old husband. She had been forced to marry Hamed Sadeghi at the age of 16. A few days earlier, Samad Zahabi had been hanged for shooting a fellow shepherd during a row over who should graze their sheep. He committed this, when he was 17. Samad had been sentenced to death by the...

God save you from the execution The executions in Iran are never ending. We can also see a pattern that if EU officials travel to the country, the authorities threaten to execute even more people, especially juvenile offenders. A recent example is Salar Shadizadi, whose scheduled hanging coincided with the visit of Laurent Fabius (the Foreign Minister of France) and Federica Mogherini’s (the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) visit in Iran. Thank God, Salar’s execution was postponed for the second time as well, but, unfortunately, no one knows for how long. As per Amnesty International, the Iranian authorities are believed to have executed an astonishing694 people between 1 January and 15 July 2015. This number is really terrible. Especially, if we think about how many of them could be juvenile offenders or innocent people forced to confess against themselves under duress. They have not even stopped the hangings for Ramadan this year, ...

Today Amnesty International has issued a media advisory on juvenile offender Salar Shadizadi who is at imminent risk of execution. Salar Shadizadi, who is now 24, is due to be hanged on Saturday 1 August, after he was convicted of murdering a friend in 2007. He was 15 years old at the time of the offence. “To execute Salar Shadizadi, who was a child at the time of his arrest, flies in the face of international law. The Iranian authorities must immediately halt any plans to carry out the execution and ensure that Salar Shadizadi’s death sentence is commuted without delay," said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “The Iranian authorities’ pledges to respect children’s rights ring disturbingly hollow when they plan the execution of a juvenile offender just months before Iran’s review session at the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.” At least 72 juvenile offenders are believed to have ...

There is nothing new about the Islamic Republic ranking second for number of executions , after China. But the fact that the official number almost reached 300 (to be precise: 289) in 2014 is harsh.  It is also obvious that this number and the statistics shown in previous years are certainly below reality, since there are no publicly available data on capital punishment carried out in the country. Reliable sources informed Amnesty International that the figure might be even bigger than 740. According to some ethical principles, all, but only guilty people deserve to be punished, and of course, in proportion to the severity of their crime .  And what does the international law say about the death penalty? It calls on states to guarantee that “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life .”   The law also provides that “In countries which have not abolished the death ...