Report: Stop the Execution Machine

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All prisoners sentenced to death in Iran are in serious danger of secretly being executed. Concerns are specifically raised after the secret executions of Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaie. Most authorities and human rights defenders in Iran like Shirin Ebadi who have condemned such large numbers of reckless executions have made comparisons to the extensive executions of the 1980′s [in Iran]. At the same time, distinguished lawyers are being chased away and are severely suppressed for accepting political and stoning case files and defending the rights of prisoners. The execution machine in Iran is determined to completely silence the families of prisoners and their supporters. The Iranian authorities even avoid properly announcing the executions.

Roudabeh Akbari, Jafar Kazemi’s wife, in a phone call with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said that when she went to Evin prison on January 24th to visit her husband, she was told that he had already been hanged that morning. “They hanged my husband without notifying me or his lawyer. Yesterday morning in Evin, I was filling out the visitation form when they suddenly said, ‘He has been hanged already. Go home. We will call you if we decide to hand the body over to you. Go home and relax. It’s all over now.’ But it is unlikely that they will call us to pick up the body because in Mr. [Ali] Saremi’s case, they buried the body themselves. They will probably do the same to my husband’s body.”

Ten days after the execution of a prisoner in Orumiyeh, the judicial security authorities still refuse to mention his name. Everyone spoke in a cloud of doubt about Hossein Khezri’s execution. Hossein’s lawyer, Ehsan Mojtavi, in an interview with Kurdish Perspective, stated that he could not say for certain that the person whose execution the Islamic Republic media announced on January 15th was his client Hossein Khezri. In the same interview, he added, “According to the rules and regulations and the situation of this specific case file, Hossein should still be living.” However, he also added that the existing evidence and the charges on his client show that Hossein Khezri has probably been executed. Ehsan Mojtavi pointed out that the lawyer should always be informed of his client’s exact date, time, and location of execution. “This is the first time in the last decade that a death sentence has been executed in such a manner,” he said.

The families of political prisoners sentenced to death are extremely worried and anxiously waiting in the horrible condition of fearing the secret execution of their loved ones while being unable to do anything about it.

According to the statistics announced by the judicial and governmental organizations, in a period of 36 days, from December 20, 2010 to January 24, 2011, 103 prisoners were hanged in various parts of Iran. Moreover, there are reports of extensive executions in the prison in Birjand which have not been included in the above mentioned statistics because they have not yet been confirmed by official or reliable sources. In fact, there are most likely more unconfirmed executions around Iran, especially in the prisons Karoun and Sepidar in Ahvaz.