The news comes to me directly from Iran. Reza (Gholamreza) Rasaeia 34-year-old man belonging to the Kurdish ethnic minority and the Yaresan religious minority, He was secretly hanged at dawn on August 6 in Dizel Abad prison in Kermanshah province. The execution took place in connection with the uprising “Donna Vita Libertà” which crossed Iran in the period September-December 2022.
Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “With global and national media attention focused on tensions with Israel, Iranian authorities secretly carried out the horrific and arbitrary death sentence of a man who had been ill-treated and tortured in prison, including sexual assault, rape, and then being sentenced to capital punishment following a show trial.”
“This execution once again highlights how corrupt the Iranian judicial system is to the core and underscores the deadly resolve of the Tehran authorities in using the death penalty as a tool of political repression to instill fear in the population. With the inauguration of the new president last week, any illusion of progress in the field of human rights has also been dispelled.”
“The continued arbitrary execution of protesters after the Donna Vita Libertà uprising demonstrates once again that, without constitutional, legal and political reforms, human rights violations and impunity will persist. It is necessary for states to initiate investigations under the principle of universal jurisdiction against all those held responsible for crimes under international law,
including high officials of the Iranian state.”
According to information provided to Amnesty International by an informed source, Authorities gave no advance notice of Reza’s execution (Gholamreza) Rasaei neither to him, nor to his family, nor to his lawyer.
Within hours of being informed of the execution, Rasaei’s family was cruelly forced to bury his body in a remote area, far from their home and under the surveillance of police forces.
Rasaei was sentenced to death on 7 October 2023 after a grossly unfair trial based on coerced “confessions” and through torture and ill-treatment, including beatings, electric shocks, suffocation and sexual violence.
In the aftermath of the “Donna Vita Libertà” protests, Iranian authorities have intensified their use of the death penalty: in 2023, Amnesty International recorded at least 853 executions.
In 2024, executions continue at alarming levels: according to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, as of June 30, 2024, at least 274 people had been put to death.
An unparalleled disgrace for this rogue state. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, the guilt or innocence of the person, or the method used by the state to carry out the death sentence. The organization has long called on the Iranian authorities to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
Iranian authorities are carrying out a state massacre under the guise of judicial executions. People convicted of drug crimes, protesters, political dissidents and members of oppressed ethnic minorities were put to death. In 2023, Amnesty International recorded at least 853 executions. In the first seven months of 2024, according to local human rights organizations, there have already been over 300.
About 20 percent of executions are carried out against members of the Baloch ethnic minority, although they constitute only 5 percent of Iran’s population. In 2023, executions of people convicted of drug-related crimes tripled compared to the same period the previous year. These executions hit the most impoverished communities the hardest.
Authorities are executing people for just their social media posts and for sexual relations between consenting adults. Iranian authorities are intensifying their use of the death penalty as a political tool of repression. They are using this extreme, cruel and inhuman punishment to torment and terrorize people in Iran and enforce silence and submission. The international community must immediately call on Iran to impose an official moratorium on all executions, send representatives to visit death rows, and request access to the trials of those facing the death penalty.
Carlo Franza