Ahmad Shaheed Condemns Execution of 12 Individuals in Iran Related to Drug Offenses

Ahmad Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, condemned the recent executions related to drug offenses in Iran, deeming them contrary to international law and ineffective according to the admissions of Iranian officials. Iran executed 12 prisoners accused of drug trafficking on September 6 at the central prison in Karaj. This action took place just one day after Ahmad Shaheed had called for a halt to the executions. Shaheed also expressed regret that Iran imposes the death penalty for crimes that do not qualify as 'serious crimes' under international covenants. On Tuesday, in response to the executions, he reiterated that such actions constitute a 'violation of international law.' The 12 prisoners whose death sentences were carried out on Saturday had been transferred to solitary confinement the previous Wednesday and were allowed to meet with their family members before the executions. Among them was Alireza Madadpour, who was arrested in 2011 while working as a cleaner in a house where 990 grams of methamphetamine were discovered during a police raid. Ahmad Shaheed noted that Madadpour had not met with his 'court-appointed lawyer' and was sentenced to death in a 20-minute trial. The special rapporteur also reminded that the execution of the death penalty for drug-related offenses is not effective in preventing such crimes, even according to Iranian officials. This refers to statements from some judicial, legislative, and executive officials in Iran who support changes to domestic laws regarding drug-related crimes. For instance, just hours after the executions at the central prison in Karaj, the Deputy for Social Affairs and Crime Prevention of the Judiciary admitted in an interview with Tasnim News Agency that executing 'drug traffickers' in Iran has not been 'deterrent.' Mohammad Baqer Olfat noted that the ineffectiveness of such executions had been formally communicated to the head of the Judiciary, and the Crime Prevention Office had provided the results of its 'research and studies' on this matter to Sadeq Amoli Larijani. Meanwhile, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the Secretary of the Judiciary's Human Rights Headquarters, stated on September 2 that it cannot be said that the death penalty is ineffective, but the discussion is about greater effectiveness, and international issues are also significant, asserting that Iran should not be among the countries with the highest number of executions. This judicial official had previously stated that the 'avalanche-like' number of executions of drug offenders in Iran has called into question what he referred to as the 'illuminating punishment' of retribution. Recently, a member of the Legal and Judicial Commission of the Parliament announced the review of the abolition of the death penalty in this commission, reminding that a single-article bill to abolish the death penalty for drug offenses, which did not succeed in the ninth parliament, has again been placed on the agenda of the tenth parliament's judicial commission. The issue of drug-related executions was also raised by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in April this year, when Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein urged Iran to refrain from executing these convicts until the Islamic Consultative Assembly decides on laws regarding the punishment of drug traffickers. In recent years, Iran has had the second highest number of executions in the world after China, and the Iranian Judiciary's Human Rights Headquarters announced on August 27 that over 93% of executions in Iran are related to drug offenses. Statistics provided by Ahmad Shaheed indicate that in the past year, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center recorded the execution of 966 death sentences in Iran, more than half of which were related to drug offenses.