ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iran revoked the death sentence of a Kurdish man ten months after his execution, his family told Rudaw on Sunday, adding that they have filed a complaint to seek justice for him.
“Two weeks ago, a letter was sent to Khedir Qavidel’s brothers, saying to visit us [at the Urmia prosecutor office] so that your brother is freed. This letter comes after 10 months have passed since the execution of Khedir Qavidel,” a close relative, who preferred to stay anonymous for safety reasons, told Rudaw on Sunday.
“They told them your brother’s death sentence was not approved by the Supreme Court, he’s been executed,” added the relative. "They told them you can get financial compensation [for his blood], but they said we don’t need financial compensation. We just want to know why he was executed before his sentence was approved by the Supreme Court.”
The relative noted that the brothers have filed a complaint, seeking justice.
Qavidel, from Sardasht, was arrested about eight years ago on drug-related charges with several other people. He was convicted and his sentence was carried out at Urmia Central Prison in September 2020.
"There is a lot of conflict in his dossier; they wrote it each time in a different manner, and his family wants to know why they did that. They wanted to impose the death sentence each time differently," the relative added.
Iran is one of the biggest death penalty enforcers 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 data collected by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 230 people were executed in 2020. The report added that more than 72% of executions were done in secret and not reported by the government.
International monitors are concerned that human rights could further erode in Iran under President-elect Ebrahim Raisi who played a role in a 1988 prison massacre.
Raisi has defended his record. “All that I have done through my years of service has always been towards defending human rights,” he said in a press conference in June.
“If we want to solve this legally, executions should be – like many developed countries in the world – abolished in the first place,” Osman Mozayyan, a lawyer from Iran told Rudaw on Saturday.
“If a person criticized the government, transferred drugs, or was arrested with a small amount of drugs, they shouldn’t be executed. Executions should be for serious crimes, that is after allowing the convict to defend themselves,” he added.
In a 2020 human rights report published by the US State Department, 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.”
