General Outline of the Bill to Reduce the Death Penalty for Drug Traffickers Approved

The general outline of the bill to reduce the death penalty for those convicted of drug trafficking was approved on Sunday, July 16, in the Islamic Consultative Assembly. According to ISNA news agency, the outline of the urgent bill to add a clause to the Anti-Narcotics Law was approved by 182 votes in favor, 36 against, and 6 abstentions, out of a total of 246 representatives present in the Assembly. This bill, which has been under review in the Assembly for over a year, could save thousands of death row inmates from execution if passed. Reports indicate that on Sunday, the details of this bill were referred back to the Judicial and Legal Commission for further review due to opposition from the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission and experts from the Judiciary. Ali Larijani, who presided over the public session, stated: 'Regarding this bill, I asked the representative of the Judiciary, and they said they agree with the main issue but there are problems in the components that need to be resolved.' After announcing the representatives' votes, Larijani emphasized: 'We request the Legal and Judicial Commission to expedite the review of this matter in cooperation with representatives from the Anti-Narcotics Headquarters, the Judiciary, and the Security Commission.' This request comes as Mahmoud Sadqi, a representative from Tehran, criticized the referral of this bill to the Judicial Commission, which delays its consideration, saying that 'obstruction is taking place in the approval of this bill.' This member of the Hope faction in the Assembly reminded that 'perhaps the reason for the repeated delays in this bill is that according to one of the provisions, its ruling will be retroactive, and based on that, a significant number of death row inmates will be exempted, and possibly to prevent them from benefiting from such an opportunity, obstruction is being created in the approval of the bill.' Masoud Pezeshkian, who chaired part of the public session on Sunday morning, responded to this remark by saying: 'According to Article 156 of the internal regulations of the Assembly, this remark is not valid, as the chairperson is allowed to refer the bill to the relevant commission with the Assembly's vote.' According to statistics announced by Ali Bakhtiar, a member of the Judicial and Legal Commission on April 12, 5,000 drug traffickers in Iran are 'on death row.' Hassan Norouzi, spokesperson for the Judicial Commission, said last week that in the reforms made in the Judicial Commission, the death penalty is considered for trafficking more than 100 kilograms of traditional drugs and two kilograms of industrial drugs. Under current law, the death penalty is imposed for trafficking more than thirty grams of industrial drugs. This law also stipulates prison and fines for trafficking 20 to 100 kilograms of traditional drugs, with the death penalty for repeat offenses. The bill to change the punishment of drug offenders from execution to imprisonment does not include habitual offenders, leaders of drug trafficking gangs, and armed traffickers. Mohammad Javad Larijani, Secretary of the Human Rights Headquarters of the Judiciary of Iran, recently stated that after nearly 40 years of executions for drug offenses, 'no desirable result has been achieved from it.' Amnesty International reported in its annual report 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 is criticized by international human rights organizations. The Iran Human Rights Organization based in Norway recently announced that in the past six months, 239 individuals were executed in Iran, of which only 45 cases were reported in official Iranian media. The charges against about half of those executed were drug trafficking.