INDICTMENT AGAINST DEATH PENALTY IN IRAN:
On the Occasion of October 10, the International
Day against Death Penalty
Death penalty is premeditated murder by the state.
Death penalty allows the killing
of citizens openly and legally by states. This
crime committed by the government
depreciates human life and reduces the repellent
nature of murder on the one hand,
and, on the other, reflects the dominance and
supremacy of the ruling class and the
powerlessness of the citizens. In societies where
the capital punishment prevails
infringement on the life and security of the people
is easier and more common than
in other societies. Throughout human history
dictators have always used capital
punishment as a means of suppression and social
intimidation to maintain the
dominance of the ruling classes. From this
perspective capital punishment, even
the execution of criminals, is a political crime.
The Islamic regime is among the governments that
make ample use of capital
punishment. In addition to prison and torture and
retribution and flogging and
assassination, it also makes use of this weapon
extensively, verging on genocide, in
order to push back and suppress a rebellious
society that detests it. If capital
punishment is a crime, then in Iran it is a hundred
times more so because under the
sway of the Islamic Republic it is not only
political opponents and people who
have not committed any crime whatsoever who are
targeted, but even the execution
sentences for ordinary criminals are entirely
unwarranted and murderous. Cases of
executions in Iran would be declared invalid and
unjust according to the most basic
modern legal and juridical standards in any court
of law.
The ways of executions in the Islamic Republic is
also savage and murderous.
Public executions, including hanging from a crane,
throwing the condemned down
from a height, as is used for homosexuals,
execution by stoning that was stopped
due to widespread protests, and involving the
family of the murder victim in
deciding the verdict and carrying out the
execution, are all current methods of
executions and indications of the infinite savagery
of the Islamic Republic.
It is therefore far from an exaggeration to say
that nowhere in the world is the
savagery and cruelty of capital punishment more
apparent than in the Islamic
Republic. Executions in Iran are the instrument of
genocide, Ideological cleansing,
disposing of political opponents, imposition of
religious laws and creating fear, and
casting the shadow of death over society as a whole
in order to maintain a horrific
religious state.
In the summer of 1988 alone more than five thousand
political prisoners, mostly
very young men and women of the opposition who were
serving their sentence
periods, were secretly executed and buried in mass
graves with no trace. These
executions took place by order of the highest
authority in the country, Khomeini.
The “Death Committee” implemented by him, of which Ebrahim Raiisi, (the
current president of Iran) was also a member, asked
only one question from the
prisoner and then gave their sentence. Before this
catastrophe, between the years
1981-84, they had engaged in the same genocide,
albeit openly and on a larger
scale, through the savage attacks of gangs
Hizbollah thugs . Thousands, mainly
very young, went through trials of “revolutionary courts”
lasting no more than
several minutes, and were immediately executed,
often for distributing leaflets or
writing a slogan on a wall. There were days
following May 1981 when daily
newsp apers p ublished with long lists
of the day’s executed youth, asking the
parents to come and take the bodies. The government
even demanded the cost of
the bullets with which the young person was put to
death before handing over the
body.
The first action of the government was immediately
after coming to power after
1979 revolution was summary executions-without –trial, of the authorities of the
old regime. The new regime then used the terrifying
instrument of death penalty
complemented with governmental killings and
assassinations, targeting the people
who had made a revolution with the expectation of
freedom, welfare, and control
of their own destiny. The field execution of Shir
Mohammad Derakhshandeh
Toomaj, Abdulhakim Makhtoom, Tavagh Mohammad Vahedi
and Hussein
Georjani, leaders of the councils of the people of
Turkemansahra,in Februari 1980,
the street assassination of Jahangir Ghaleh
Miyandoaab (one of the popular leaders
of the unemployed workers’ movement and shooting into their protest lines in
February 1981),the mass execution of at least 56
people in the cities of Sanandaj,
Saghez, Mariwan, Paweh, and Kermanshah through
1979, where people continued
the revolution through their elected councils, the
attack on universities in the whole
country to p urge their opponents and
communists in the name of “cultural
revolution” and the killing of tens of students by “Hizbullahi” thugs’ are all
manifestations of the efforts of the Islamic
Republic to consolidate its rule through
execution, assassination and imprisonment during
the first years of its reign. The
pictures published from only one of these crimes,
i.e. the execution of a line of
militant youth in Sanandaj airport, including Naser
Salimi and Ahsan Nahid, one
with a bandaged hand and the other lying on a
stretcher in September 1979,
represent one of the most shocking crimes of
contemporary history.
We should also mention the execution of 59 people
in the city of Mahabad when
the age of the condemned was below 18. Many of the
post revolution executions
were ordered by Khalkhali, according to Islamic
Sharia law unceremoniously and
without trial. Khalkhali’s confessions
reflect an aspect of the immensity of the
crimes of the Islamic Rep ublic: “I was
the Sharia judge and executed over five
hundred of criminals and the agents of the Shah’s regime and hundreds
of the
activists of the unrest in Kurdistan, Gonbad and
Khoozestan, and also killed a
number of trouble makers and drug
smugglers.”
But this scale of executions and state crimes were
still not enough to save the
Islamic Republic. The Islamic regime engaged in
full scale genocide, once to
conclusively defeat the 1979 revolution and establish
itself as the dominant power,
and the second time to confront the possible
consequences of the end of the war
with Iraq—something
it had boasted it would continue till victory. The executions
and p olitical killings of the 1980’s
are the most obvious instances of crimes against
humanity in contemporary history.
Also after the war, the Islamic regime’s ap paratus of
executions and assassination
of its opponents and the protesting people has
incessantly been in operation until
now. “chain killings” during the p residency of
Rafsanjani in 1998 when writers
and political activists such as Mohammad Jafar
Pooyandeh, Mohammad Mokhtari,
Parviz Davani, Parvin Eskandari and Daryoush
Forouhar were strangled or lynched
with knives by the agents of the Information
Ministry, organized assassination and
shooting to death tens of opposition members abroad
such as Shapoor Bakhtyar,
Gholam Keshavarz, Sedigh Kamangar, Fereydoon
Farrokhzad, Abdurrahman
Ghasemlou, Kazem Rajavi, and Sadegh Sharafkandi,
the killing of tens of people
in the 2009 protests both on the streets such as
Neda Aghasultan, or under torture
in prisons such as Sattar Beheshti and Zahra
Kazemi, or the shocking crimes
carried out in the Kahrizak prison after the 2009
uprising such as the killing of
Mohsen Rouhulamini, Mohammad Kamrani, and Amir
Javadifar under torture, the
time by time execution of political prisoners such
as Farzad Kamangar and his
comrades, Ramin Hosseinpanahi, Loghman and Zanyar
Moradi and Roohullah
Zamand many others, and the “suicides”
of condemned p olitical p risoners inside
the prison such as Kavous Seyyed Emami, Sina
Ghanbari, and Zahra Bani
Ya’ghoub, the massacre of 1500 demonstrators in October 2019 and the
execution
of those arrested in the protests of recent years
such as the execution of Navid
Afkari’ are all further evidence of the fact that
premeditated governmental murder
in Iran is the means of splashing blood on Iranian
society for the sake of the
survival of the Islamic regime.
But these executions and murders that been carried
out against the political
opposition and the protesting people still fail to
reflect the depth of the Islamic
savagery and the inhuman dimensions of capital
punishment in Iran. Many of the
victims of governmental killings have been atheists
or followers of other religions
such as the Bahaiis, among them Mona Mahmoudnezhad
who was hanged at the
age of 17 in Shiraz, and the Darwishes, among them Mohammad
Salas who was
executed, or “insulters” of the p rophet. In certain cases cap ital p
unishment has
been used for such “crimes” like drinking alcohol. Homosexuals have been
executed for their sexual orientation. There are
countless cases of the execution of
children and minors. In many cases execution
sentences have been carried out
against women such as Reyhaneh Jabbari who have
defended themselves against
sexual molestation of men, in many cases government
authorities. Also many
imprisoned girls have been raped before execution,
to follow the Sharia order
against the execution of virgins.
The execution of children in the Islamic Republic –such as Atefeh Rajabi—is a
blatant example of the savagery of this government.
The Islamic regime has rightly
been called the executioner of children. This
regime has executed many minors
who at the time of their arrest and issuing of the
execution verdict were under 18
years of age. To avoid international pressure, the
Islamic Republic issues the
execution sentnece but executes them after they
have reached 18, or, as in the case
of Mehdi Sohrabifar, Amin Sedaghat, and Mahboubeh
Mofidi (nicknamed the 17
year old bride) executes them in secret.
But the highest number of executions in Iran is
related to cases that according to
some people may be legally justified. The execution
of murderers, rapists, the
smugglers and sellers of narcotics, or hoarders has
put the Islamic Republic at the
top of the list of countries that practice capital
punishment. However, even such
executions have been carried out in the most unfair
conditions contrary to the
civilized and modern judiciary standards. Moreover,
the government has openly
used these executions as a means to show its power
and an iron fist to society as a
whole. The regime has a number of prison inmates at
its disposal, who are
condemned to death(usually from the most deprived
and defenseless sectors of
society such as Afghani refugees and asylum
seekers), and uses them to create
intimidation campaigns by setting up gallows when
sees necessary. The Islamic
Republic is in reality what it is called namely
“the regime of the one hundred
thousand executions”.
A terrifying aspect of capital punishment in Iran
is its being linked to Sharia law
such as the principle of retribution. In cases of
murder, the Islamic Republic tries
to include the killed p erson’s family
as “owners of the b lood” in the p rocess of
punishment, turning them into accomplices in
premeditated state murder.
Iran however, is not only the country of “a regime with one hundred thousand
executions.”. It is also the country of the everyday fight
against capital punishment.
In Iran there is a broad mass movement against
capital punishment, which, in
recent, thanks to the efforts of the International
Committee against execution
reached its zenith. It has now become one of the
strongest mass movements in the
country. Within the campaigns of this movement
unknown people who were
waiting to be executed such as Nazenin Fathi, Kobra
Rahmanpour, Afsaneh
Nowroozi, Shahla Jahed, Delara Darabi, Sina
Dehghan, and tens others became
internationally known and some of them were saved
from execution. Thus a
strong, political, and humane movement with tens of
well-known features was
born. This movement comes to the fore on various
occasions. Its latest
manifestation was the online march against capital
punishment in the world in June
2020, when an 11.000000 strong twitter storm in
opposition to the execution
verdict for three of those arrested in October 2020
forced the regime into retreat.
There is also a widespread movement seeking justice against all
the regime’s
crimes, in particular the executions of the 1980s ,
demanding the trial of the heads
of the regime. This movement is quite influential
and increasingly gathers
momentum, becoming more widespread with the arrival
of mothers who seek
justice. One example is constant presence of
Khavaran Mothers who keep the
memory of their lost loved ones, alive. (Khavaran
is the name of a remote
cemetery in Tehran, which has become very famous in
Iran for burying the bodies
of thousands of political prisoners and has become
a gathering place for justiceseeking
people).The Iran Tribunal , putting Hamid Noori on
trial in Sweden which
was made possible thanks to the work of political
activists and the families, are
other examples of the work of the movement against
Islamic regime and capital
punishment. The criminal move of the Islamic regime
to involve the families of the
murder victims to engage in execution of their
beloved killers, has been faced with
the “forgiveness movement” by the dead p erson’s
relatives and exp erienced a
clear
defeat.
Here we should also point to the international
worldwide movement against
stoning, the most savage form of execution by the
regime, aiming to intimidate
women and force them into submission. The campaign
to save Sakine Mohammadi
Ashtyani a woman who was convicted to death by
stoning, disgraced the Islamic
Republic in the eyes of the world, and forced it to
stop the practice of this heinous
crime.
The International Committee against execution asks
for the immediate and
unconditional annulment of all execution sentences
in Iran. In our view death
penalty is not acceptable under any circumstances.
The execution of political and
ideological opponents, execution based on sexual
orientation, and the execution of
children should not only be totally stopped, but
each such case must be condemned
globally as a crime by the Islamic Republic against
humanity. We demand the
formation of fact finding committees in relation to
all the executions carried out by
the Islamic Republic. We ask for an immediate end
to executions in public, and its
condemnation internationally. The medieval and
inhuman law of retribution and
involvement of “the owners of the blood” in
deciding the performance of execution
verdicts should be stopped. We are part of the
indictment movement in Iran and we
strive for the fulfillment of all its demands,
including the trial of the heads of the
Islamic regime of Iran for committing numerous
crimes against humanity.
International Committee Against Execution (ICAE)
https://noto-execution.blogspot.com
3rd October, 2021
No to Death Penalty in Iran and the World
October 10 is International ‘Day Against the Death Penalty’. Amnesty International and The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty declared on the October 10, 2002, that this day would from then on be the official ‘World Day Against the Death Penalty’. The purpose of declaring a day as the day against the death penalty is to show the will and determination to abolish the death penalty in all countries of the world by holding various activities. The Islamic Republic of Iran has the highest number of executions in the world after China. Therefore, we believe that the fight against the Islamic Republic and the cessation of executions in Iran is an important and efficient in the global fight to abolish this inhuman punishment.
Capital punishment is the state's terminology for murder. Individuals murder each other, but states sentence individuals to 'capital punishment to death. The demand to end capital punishment and prohibit murder stems from opposition to intentional, deliberate and planned murder of one by the other. That a state or ruling political force is responsible does not make the slightest difference to the fact that we are dealing with intentional murder. Capital punishment is the most deplorable and appalling form of intentional murder since a political authority, publicly, with prior notice, on behalf of society, with the utmost legitimacy and ruthlessness, decides to murder someone, and announces the date and time of the event.
The Islamic Republic in Iran has repeatedly proven that it will not respect human rights through dialogue. Therefore, we emphasize that the global pressure on the Islamic Republic needs to increase and the international community must protest more strongly against the executions in Iran. The Islamic Republic must abolish or virtually end the death penalty in Iran. A regime that cannot respect this demand must be politically boycotted.
We have always called for the political-diplomatic isolation and boycott of the Islamic Republic on a global scale. Today, the time has come for this to happen. We call on all governments, and all political, sports and artistic institutions that claim to defend human rights, to sever their ties with the Islamic Republic, and to call for the prosecution of the heads and officials of the Islamic Republic for crimes against humanity. Just as the racial Apartheid regime in South Africa was boycotted by governments and international institutions, the gender Apartheid regime in Iran can and must face international sanctions.
International Committee against Execution (ICAE)
October 2020
Join call to Ban Islamic Republic of Iran from International Arena and Sports for Navid
Navid Afkari, a young Iranian wrestler was executed by the Islamic regime in Iran on 12 September 2020 despite widespread local and international pressure. He was executed on trumped up murder charges because of his involvement in anti-government protests in 2018. Many other young people have been given long-term prison sentences or are on death row for participating in the protests.
In a taped message before his execution, Afkari said he had been tortured and that There is not one shred of evidence in this damned case that shows I’m guilty. But they don’t want to listen to us. I realised they are looking for a neck for their rope.
We are outraged at his execution and call on the international community to:
*Unequivocally condemn the execution of Navid Afkari
*Politically boycott the Iranian regime and ban the regime's officials from international arena and travel
*Ban the Islamic Republic of Iran from international sports
*Demand an end to executions and the release of all political prisoner
International Committee Against Execution
I.C.A.E.I.R@gmail.com
Skype: ICAE Iran
Website: ICAE-iran.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/ICAEiran
Tel: 0046703171102
Tel: 0046737896505
International Committee Against Executions (ICAE)
-----------------------
The Iranian people need your support to stop the execution
There is a popular and mass movement going on in Iran against the capital punishment and it has had certain successes. But it needs the international support to be able to stop the ruling execution machine completely.
The unprecedented drive saw the "#Don't execute them" hashtag become a Twitter trend and topped the list for more than 24 hours.Following this massive social media movement that “#Dont’t execute them” hashtag was tweeted 11 million times, and petitions that were signed by 250,000 people, and the widespread and international reflection of these protests and the reaction of some Western states and the actions that took place in different countries; the judiciary of the Islamic Republic allowed the lawyers of these three young people to access their cases. That is after the trial and their conviction! The lawyers then announced that the sentences had been stopped for the time being and that their case would be re-examined.
Despite this successful campaign, the three young men are still at serious risk of being executed. Since the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Islamic Republic has used executions and assassinations and terror as a tool to silence its opponents and suppress the people's protests and intimidate society.
The right to protest is the most basic and undeniable international human right but the regime's response to the protesters has always been repression, arrests and even execution, because this is the only way they know for survival. We believe capital punishment is absolutely inhuman and should not be used anywhere in the human world anytime.
We call on you, the people of the world, to join the Iranian people In this historical struggle against barbaric acts of a barbaric regime against people. Our goal is to gain international support and exert pressure on the Islamic Republic to stop the death sentences. Our most urgent aim is to stop the death sentences for these three young men: Amir Hossein Moradi, Saeed Tamjidi and Mohammad Rajabi who are on the verge of execution.
We call on all trade unions and human rights organizations in the world to send a letter of protest to the leaders of the Islamic Republic and call on them to end all executions in Iran.
We also call on those European countries’ states, where executions are abolished, to protest explicitly against executions in Iran. Ambassadors of the Islamic Republic must be held to account in the international forums against executions in Iran. The Islamic Republic can and should be forced to abandon this absolutely barbarian tool against people.
Kind regards
International Committee against Execution (ICAE)
Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran (CFPPI)
Campaign to Free Jailed Workers (Free Them Now)
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WOMEN ON DEATH ROW: A SCARY, SCARY THING
“The fire happened when I was five years old,” she explains. “The house burnt to the ground. My mother and I were the only two they couldn’t get to. I tried to beat the fire off of her, and ended up with burns on my face, arms, hands, back, buttocks, and thighs. She died of smoke inhalation and severe burns. She was twenty-four.”
Speaking about her mother’s death recalls the grief Kelley feels about her own children. At the time of her incarceration, they were nine, seven, five, three, and eight months. Three now live with relatives, one with a friend, and the youngest was put up for adoption. “I’ve made some bad choices in my life. I’ll admit that. But I was a good mother. I always watched after my kids and provided for them.”
Kelley’s children still visit occasionally, but she believes they are “pulling away.” She tells me
WHAT TO DO WHEN STOP SNORING MOUTHPIECES AND DEVICES AREN’T ENOUGH
Snoring mouthpieces can be effective for snoring. But these can only be truly effective for mild to moderate situations. If the snoring is severe and frequent, the doctor may suggest a surgical procedure that should eliminate snoring. Most surgical procedures for snoring can be relatively invasive so the patient may have to take off some time from work or school. This is to give time for recovery.
After the surgery, the doctor will give instructions that the patient should follow carefully. It is important for the patient to adhere with the doctor´s orders to avoid complications. The patient has to lessen his or her physical activities after the surgery. He or she can only increase his or her activities after obtaining permission from the doctor.
The newspapers are constantly quoting numbers of people who support the death penalty. Almost every Filipino I speak to is for it. The president is adamant about the need for this kind of “justice.” The lone group that seems to speak out against it is the Catholic Church.
For those who don’t know, the Philippines is an extremely catholic country. My co-workers – the ones who support capital punishment – always attend mass on Sundays and high holidays, and often on Wednesdays to boot! In the shopping mall at 6:00 PM everything stops for the evening prayer which is piped in over the intercom. Every person, all transactions. Catholic morality is evident in many of the county’s laws – no divorce or abortion for example. And yet people are marching in the street demanding blood. Even though the Philippines will use lethal injection, the streets are filled …
DEATH CONTINUES, UNABATED
Now, for the first time in a generation, there are signs of a shift in the public mood. The biggest came on Jan. 31, when the governor of Illinois, an old-guard Republican named George Ryan, halted all executions in his state. Illinois, he admitted, has a “shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on death row.” Since 1976, the state has executed 12 men. Over the same period, 13 condemned men were exonerated. Three were freed after journalism students dug up evidence that someone else had committed the crime. In other cases, the Chicago Tribune documented gross legal lapses. “I cannot support a system,” Ryan concluded, “which has proven so fraught with error.”
Other signs of change: 12 of the 38 states with capital punishment have bills pending to stop executions…
CHALLENGING A HARD SYSTEM
I was very affected by my experiences and felt a calling to return to that office when I graduated. So after graduating in 1985, I went down and soon began handling a lot of cases out of Alabama, where there is no public defender system, no real public-interest litigation in the criminal-justice area. There were so many unmet needs. In 1989, we decided it made sense to start a project in that state.
When you speak to a general audience about capital punishment. I’ve noticed that you often focus less on the absolute question of the morality of the death penalty than on the abuses and problems in its application. Why?
Our society is so polarized on issues like the death penalty. I don’t think we can just stand up and say: “This is the right position. All of you folks way over there need to come over here on our side.” As a Christian with an evangelical heritage, I think you have to go and get people, meet them where they are.
In the United States, what has been most effective, at least in …
CANADIANS CAN’T SUPPORT STATE-SANCTIONED MURDER
And the death of Stockwell Day as a prime ministerial candidate — a glib, attractive man who did not have the resolve to finish either the university or the Bible college he dabbled at — came when he actually included in his Alliance platform a national referendum on capital punishment. The new President of the United States, the richest nation in history, the only superpower left in the universe, is promoting “compassionate conservatism.” The greatest oxymoron since “military intelligence,” “giant shrimp,” “airplane meals” and “journalistic ethics.”
The new president of the greatest empire since Rome has been elected — leaving aside the pregnant chads — on a platform that included the death penalty. In his six years as governor, Texas not only led the nation but, considering its population, …
EU TAKES ITS ACTIVISM SERIOUSLY
The EU presidency followed the demarche with an appeal to state governors, asking them to emulate the example of Illinois Governor George Ryan, who imposed a moratorium on the use of capital punishment after questions arose over the guilt of some Illinois death row inmates. In its letter, the EU pointed out that “while more than 600 people have been executed [in the US] since the reinstatement of the penalty in 1976, as many as eighty-one people in twenty-one states have been found innocent and removed from death row.” Such instances, they emphasized, reflect the inherent risk attached to carrying out a punishment that cannot be reversed.
In July, Ambassador Francois Bujon …
EXONERATION: A VALUABLE REDEMPTION
Nearly always it is a Supreme Court decision that sparks debate and political action which define us as a free people and a democratic nation. The Court’s recent denial of two petitions to review death- sentence cases has put international focus on a truly contentious issue: the often decades-long delay between conviction and execution in the United States. Normally, petitions for certiorari are denied in one sentence (for example, “The petition for writ of certiorari is denied”). But in Knight v. Florida and Moore v. Nebraska, two Supreme Court justices heatedly clashed over whether the death-sentence cases should even be reviewed.
The two petitions (consolidated by the Court) requested that the Supreme Court consider whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits as “cruel and unusual punishment” the execution of prisoners who have spent nearly 20 years or more on death row. The quick reaction to this question, by some, is that a prisoner should not be allowed to take advantage of the “full and generous avenue of appeals” (which often take years, even decades, to exhaust) and then turn around and complain that the delay in execution violates his fundamental rights. Indeed, both Knight and Moore took full advantage of every appellate right they had. Nearly half their time on death …
CAN ANYTHING KILL THE US DEATH PENALTY?
The reforms that death-penalty opponents cheer might actually strengthen Americans’ faith in the practice they so despise.
It wouldn’t be the first time. In the early ’80s, when states began abandoning the electric chair for the more humane method of lethal injection, some anti-death-penalty activists cheered. But, by sanitizing capital punishment, states robbed the abolitionists of one of their strongest arguments: the practice’s barbarity. Henry Schwarzchild, the late dean of the American anti-death-penalty movement and a fervent opponent of lethal injection, used to quote the critic Alexander Woollcott: “The worst sin of all is to do well that which shouldn’t be done at all.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the first state to use lethal injection–Texas–now accounts for more than one-third of all the executions in America.
Something similar happened during the previous decade as well, when opponents of the death penalty, by challenging its constitutional basis, achieved a nationwide moratorium on capital punishment, beginning in 1967. In 1972, with its ruling in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court lent its imprimatur to the halt in executions, declaring that the arbitrary and discriminatory implementation of the death penalty constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.” University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Anthony Amsterdam, a leading death- penalty abolitionist who argued the case before the …