Tehran – Iran has hanged two men for burning a copy of the Koran and insulting the Prophet Muhammad, causing a stir among human rights organizations, who called the move “shocking” and “medieval.”
Sadrolá Fazeli Zare and Yusef Mehrdad, convicted of having “insulted the Prophet Muhammad and other blasphemies, including having burned the Koran”, were hanged yesterday morning, the website of the information agency of the judicial authority, Mizan Online, indicated. . One of the defendants confessed in March 2021 that he had posted these insults on social media, according to Mizan.
Human rights NGOs warn that in Iran these “confessions” are often the result of torture.
Iran is the second country that executes the most people in the world behind China, according to several organizations, including Amnesty International.
In 2022, the number of people executed increased by 75% compared to the previous year, the NGOs Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Norway, and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), in France, reported in April. According to IHR, at least 208 people have been executed since the start of the year.
At least 582 people were executed in the Islamic Republic in 2022, a record since 2015, compared to 333 in 2021, the two organizations said.
The United States condemned the execution of the two men, which State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said was a “serious reminder of the regime’s penchant for violating the human rights of the Iranian people.”
“The Islamic Republic has again shown its medieval character by executing two people who expressed their opinion,” reacted Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the IHR.
Islamic law (sharia) applied in Iran allows capital punishment for charges of blasphemy, but executions for that reason have been relatively rare in recent years, and the vast majority of those executed were accused of drug trafficking or murder.
For Amnesty, these new executions “occur in the context of a sharp increase in the use of capital punishment by the Iranian authorities in the last two weeks.” The increase in executions coincides with the protest movement that began in September in Iran with the death of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, after her arrest by the moral police, who accused her of having violated the strict code that regulates dress and requires women to wear the veil.
Source: Ambito
