More than 600 people have been executed in Iran since the start of the year, the highest annual number in eight years, with two months to go, a human rights group said on Friday.
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Nine executions took place in a single day this week in a prison near Tehran, while two people face execution for adultery, according to the Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights (IHR).
The IHR and other non-governmental organizations have accused Iran of using the death penalty as a tool to sow fear after the country was rocked by protests against women’s rights for several months starting in September 2022.
“The international community must respond to more than 600 executions in 10 months, or two state killings per day,” said IHR Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
“Silence is an indirect consent to these crimes,” he added, noting that Iran took over the chairmanship of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Social Forum earlier this week.
The 604 executions recorded by the IHR are already higher than the 582 recorded in 2022 and are the most numerous since 2015, when 972 executions were recorded.
Activists have expressed dismay at the growing number of drug-related executions, which have increased in recent years after previously declining due to changes in Iran’s penal code.
In the latest executions on Wednesday, nine men, including an Afghan, were hanged in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, a suburb of Tehran, most of them on murder convictions, IHR said.
The NGO also claims that a man and a woman, Abolfazl Barat Vakili and Leila Kholghi Sakachayi, were sentenced to death for adultery by a Tehran court in August. Sex outside of marriage is illegal in Iran, but death sentences for adultery have become rarer in recent years.
“The international community should not tolerate executions for consensual sexual relations (…) by a government sitting at the United Nations in the 21st century,” stressed Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam.