ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish political prisoner was allegedly executed by Iran on Monday having been accused of killing two Iranian border guards, according to a rights monitor.
The Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) on Monday announced the execution of Firuz Musalou, saying he had been handcuffed and transferred from Urmia central prison to an unknown location on Sunday evening.
The human rights monitor cited the semi-official Fars News, who reported the execution of a prisoner accused of killing two Iranian border guards and injuring three others, without mentioning his name. The execution was carried out without the prior knowledge of his lawyer and family, according to KHRN.
Musalou, who was reportedly a former member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), was sentenced to death in March. He had surrendered to the Iranian security forces on the Sardasht border of Iran in 2019.
Iran executed at least 168 people in the first five months of 2022, compared to 110 people in the same period in 2021.
Amnesty International said in May that global executions in 2021 rose by 20 percent, with Iran topping the list for state-sanctioned killings over the past five years, as it recorded its highest execution figure since 2017 with 314 people executed.
In its annual 2021 report, Amnesty stated that "the death penalty was imposed after unfair trials, including for offences not meeting the threshold of the ‘most serious crimes’ such as drug-trafficking and financial corruption, and for acts not internationally recognized as crimes” in Iran.
“Death sentences were used as a weapon of repression against protesters, dissidents and ethnic minorities," it added.
