The number of executions last year increased by 48 percent compared to 2022, and also marked Iran’s highest execution rate since 2015.
Amnesty attributed the surge in executions mainly to Tehran’s strict anti-narcotic policies. The watchdog recorded 481 drug-related executions, making up 56 percent of the total number of executions in 2023.
The executions mainly targeted the country's marginalized and economically disadvantaged Baluchi community, which accounted for 138 of the drug-related executions.
“The death penalty is abhorrent in all circumstances but deploying it on a mass scale for drug-related offences after grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts is a grotesque abuse of power. The Islamic Republic’s deadly anti-narcotics policies are contributing to a cycle of poverty and systemic injustice, and further entrenching discrimination against marginalized communities, in particular Iran’s oppressed Baluchi minority,” the report cited Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, as saying.
Baluchis are a mainly Sunni ethnic minority in Iran, living predominantly in the southeastern Baluchestan region, near the border with Pakistan.
Tehran has heavily cracked down on drug trade in recent years, carrying out an alarming number of executions. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in April 2023 described his country as being “at the forefront of the fight against drugs.”
The Islamic regime also used the death penalty to silence dissent in 2023, according to Amnesty, saying that at least six men were executed in relation to the 2022 Jin Jiyan Azadi (Woman Life Freedom) protests, and one in relation to the 2019 protests.
Additionally, the report criticized Iranian authorities for executing a 17-year-old boy, and four other people for crimes committed when they were below the age of 18, reiterating its call on Tehran to abolish the death penalty for crimes committed by children.
Eltahawy called on the international community to press Iran for an immediate moratorium on all executions, stressing that without a robust global response will embolden Tehran to execute thousands more with impunity.
Many of those who are executed in Iran are convicted based on confessions condemned by rights groups as being often obtained under duress.
