A Member of Parliament: The Bill to Limit the Execution of Drug Traffickers Will Be Voted On

On Tuesday, June 5, a member of parliament announced that a bill to limit the execution of drug traffickers will soon be put to a vote in the Iranian parliament. According to ISNA news agency, Fatemeh Saidi wrote in her Telegram channel that "members of parliament are on the verge of a significant decision." In her note, Saidi defended the limitation of death sentences for "drug-related criminals," stating that voting for this bill is "a vote for the lives of hundreds of families that are destroyed by the death of one person." She did not mention details of the bill but noted that its text is "the result of the efforts of hundreds of experts and the most prominent legal scholars in parliament." Saidi added that "hundreds of civil activists and NGOs have worked for years to bring this bill to its current point." The parliament member emphasized that "we do not vote for no punishment, but we also do not consider the death penalty appropriate." According to statistics announced by Ali Bakhtiar, a member of the Judicial and Legal Commission of the parliament on April 12, 5,000 drug traffickers in Iran are "on death row." This statistic comes despite Amnesty International reporting a 42% decrease in the number of executions in Iran in 2016 compared to the previous year. Despite this decrease, the number of executions of drug traffickers in Iran remains high, and discussions have been ongoing in the judiciary and parliament regarding finding solutions to further reduce these numbers. The bill to amend the death penalty for drug offenders is one of the proposals being pursued in the Iranian parliament and is expected to be voted on in the near future. Bakhtiar stated that under this bill, instead of the death penalty and life imprisonment, a prison sentence of 25 to 30 years will be considered for individuals who do not play a managerial role in trafficking or do not resort to armed actions for this purpose. Monetary fines ranging from 1 billion to 10 billion rials are also among the provisions of this bill. According to Bakhtiar, another clause of this bill, which relates to the amount of industrial and traditional drugs held or trafficked to determine the death penalty, is also under review in the commission. This bill will be on the parliament's agenda at a time when the United Nations has repeatedly called for a halt to the implementation of death sentences as a punishment for drug trafficking, both in Iran and in other countries around the world. From the perspective of this global body, the death penalty has no effect on drug-related crimes, and preventing such crimes fundamentally requires other methods. Mohammad Javad Larijani, the Secretary of the Human Rights Headquarters of the Iranian Judiciary, also stated recently that after nearly 40 years of executions for drug offenses, "no desirable results have been achieved." Nevertheless, Iranian officials continue to express contradictory statements regarding drug-related executions. For example, the Secretary of the Human Rights Headquarters stated, "We act in Iran based on our own responsibility, and instead of being appreciated, we are condemned."