ERBIL, Kurdistan Region —Three Kurds were executed in Iran’s Western Azerbaijan province at dawn on Sunday, human rights monitors have reported, the first since Iran celebrated the New Year late last month.
Sadiq Mahi, Ahmed Nematwand and Mohammed Mahmoudi were executed at Urmia’s central prison after having been transferred to solitary confinement, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on Sunday.
The six were sentenced on drug-related charges, but three of the men had their executions halted for unknown reasons, the agency added.
The families of the deceased had been informed of the executions before they took place, according to the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
One execution was carried out in March and at least 25 Kurdish civilians and activists were detained, according to data from KHRN. At least 22 Kurdish civilians and activists were sentenced from six months and 30 lashes to 15 years in prison on various charges.
Iran is one of the biggest executors in the world, with its number of death sentences branded “troubling” by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman in a March statement.
According to a yearly report by Iran Human Rights (IHR), at least 267 people were executed in 2020, in addition to 280 executions in 2019 and 273 in 2018.
“Iranian authorities use the death penalty as an instrument to create fear among people - just like the way Daesh did [Arabic acronym for Islamic State],” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, IHR director told Rudaw English on Sunday.
“We are very aware of the fact that the number of executions in the ethnic regions of Iran, especially in Kurdish regions increased in 2020, compared to previous years and we have called on the international community to give special attention to the situation in Kurdistan and Baluchistan,” said Moghaddam, saying authorities would “back off” if “we manage to increase the political cost of executions.”
Last June, dozens of human rights groups and organizations sent a joint letter to the UN Human Rights Council to extend the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur monitoring the situation of human rights in Iran, accusing the Iranian government of “wide range of human rights violations” in the letter, according to Radio Farda.
Activists in Iran’s Kurdistan province work to secure commutation of sentences or releases for people sentenced to death by hanging for crimes including murder, despite risking arrest and facing backlash for their advocacy.
In a 2020 human rights report published by the US State Department on Tuesday, numerous human rights violations were listed in Iran, “most commonly executions for crimes not meeting the international legal standard of ‘most serious crimes’ and without fair trials of individuals.”
According to an October 2020 survey by IHR in coordination with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP), 70 percent of Iranians oppose the death penalty.
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