Fourteen more executions in Vakilabad prison

GVF — Another fourteen prisoners have been hanged in Iran’s Vakilabad prison, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said on Friday.

The organisation reported that a group execution of seven prisoners was carried out on 11 August in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, north-east of Iran, while adding that seven other Vakilabad inmates were also hanged in a similar way on 20 September.

An “informed” source maintained that those executed had been convicted of drug related offences. The executions were reportedly carried out without due process, without the knowledge and presence of families and lawyers of those executed, and were unannounced by judiciary or government officials or Iranian media.

Authorities have thus far generally refused to publicly accept responsibility for the execution or to announce names, numbers, or dates about the executions, making it difficult to obtain exact figures. However on 22 June, Mashad Prosecutor Mahmoud Zoghi confirmed executions had taken place in “five stages” inside Mashad’s Vakilabad Prison, just in the “first three month of the [Iranian] year” (March 21-May 21 2011).

The Campaign has reported similar executions of “hundreds of prisoners” in 2009, 2010, and 2011 at Vakilabad Prison in Mashad. Authorities reportedly conducted more than 300 secret executions at Vakilabad prison in 2010 alone. In July 2011, local sources told the Campaign that thirty prisoners convicted of drug trafficking were hanged inside Mashad’s Vakilabad Prison on 29 June (12 inmates), and 3 July (18 inmates). Similar to two most recent cases, these inmates were also hanged in groups.

In his first report published on 23 September, Ahmad shaheed, UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, expressed “serious concerns” over the frequency of the application of capital punishment.

“[T]he Special Rapporteur is concerned that the death penalty is regularly used in cases where due process rights were denied to the accused. Secret group executions inside prisons, which reportedly occur in alarmingly high numbers, are often carried out without the knowledge and presence of families and lawyers,” the report said, adding that the investigator “is troubled by reports of the widespread application of the death penalty for crimes that do not meet the international standard for most serious crimes.”