Factional infighting, paranoia, economic ineptitude and deepening confrontation with the West have characterized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s leadership. However, a second-term presidency launched amid bloodily suppressed protests in 2009 now appears to be assuming an even more vicious character as reports accumulate of ongoing, secret mass executions and new waves of political repression.
Hard facts are hard to come by in a country where independent reporting is all but a fond memory, but Iranian human rights groups, international watchdogs and country experts all suggest the regime has embarked on what in effect is a judicial killing spree.
DRUG TRAFFICKING?
Ostensibly, the regime is cracking down on drug trafficking and other criminal activity. In truth, activists say, Tehran is pursuing a campaign of public intimidation and covert killing to subdue political opposition and quell turbulence caused by the Arab Spring revolts.
According to Amnesty International, Iran has admitted executing 190 people in the first six months of this year; an additional 130 reported executions have gone unacknowledged by the state. These figures put Iran on course for a record year for capital punishment. Last year, 252 people were executed, according to official figures, with 300 more also believed to have been killed.
Iran Human Rights, an independent monitoring organization, says the true picture is much worse. It says 25 people were hanged in one day — Sunday last week — in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. The hangings, supposedly all drug-related, were not reported by official media.
The same report said another seven people were hanged the same day in Evin prison in Tehran. It alluded to further, uncorroborated mass executions in prisons in Khorasan Province last year.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, another independent pressure group, reported last month that 26 inmates of Vakilabad prison in Mashhad were hanged on June 15. It quoted Mashhad prosecutor Mahmoud Zoghi as admitting “high numbers of executions” over the past two-and-a-half years. Zoghi said the rise was because of a high volume of drug trafficking cases.
“The execution statistics are proportionate and foreign media unjustifiably exaggerate in this subject,” he said.
ALMOST TWO A DAY
The number of public hangings is also on the increase. Since the start of this year, up to 13 men have been executed in public, eight of them since April 16, an Amnesty report said.
Iran reportedly defied international law by executing two juvenile offenders in Bandar Abbas on April 20. Overall, Iran’s execution “average” is running at almost two people a day in this year, making the regime the world’s No. 2 executioner after China.
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