European parliament calls on Iran to curb death penalty

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - European parliament members (MEPs) on Thursday called on the Iranian government to find immediate solutions regarding the usage of the death penalty in the country. This comes following a surge in executions after Iran's latest president took office in August 2021.

In a session in the European Parliament on Thursday, MEPs called on the Iranian government to "introduce an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a step towards abolishing it and to commute all death sentences," adopting a resolution on the human rights situation in Iran.

The resolution notes that since Ebrahim Raisi took office as President of Iran in August 2021, there has been a significant rise in the number of executions, including of women. 

The country disproportionately targets ethnic, religious, and other minorities, with Kurds, Baluchs, and especially members of the LGBT+ community bearing the brunt of the country's harsh laws, it said.

In addition, the parliament urged authorities in Iran to urgently amend Article 91 of the country’s Islamic Penal Code to explicitly prohibit the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by persons below 18 years of age, under all circumstances. The text was adopted by 617 votes in favour, with  8 against and 59 abstentions.

Iran has the world's highest number of executions per capita. A United Nations (UN) report by Javaid Rehman, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran last month said that at least 275 people were executed in the country between 1 January and 1 December 2021.

Dual foreign nationals are not exempt from Iran's brutal laws. A Iranian-German citizen is facing execution on charges of "spreading corruption on earth," charges he vehemently denies.

Jamshid Sharmahd, the German citizen, was abducted by the Iranian security services in 2020 while in transit in Dubai and then brought under duress to Iran.

In December, Kurdish political prisoner Heidar Ghorbani was secretly executed despite international human rights experts urging against his sentence.

According to data collected by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 230 people were executed in 2020. The report added that more than 72 percent of executions were done in secret and largely unreported by the government.