Iran Human Rights Organization: 4 Male and Female Prisoners Executed in Karaj

The Iran Human Rights Organization reported on Friday, April 27, that on Wednesday, April 25, the sentences of four prisoners, including one woman, who were sentenced to death or qisas (retribution) for charges related to "drugs" or "premeditated murder," were carried out in Karaj. The organization identified one of the executed individuals as Pejman Azizi, who was sentenced to death for drug-related charges. According to the Iran Human Rights Organization, "Pejman Azizi was very young at the time of his arrest, and there is a possibility that he was a child offender." The website Rokna reported that on Thursday, April 26, the death sentences of two men and one woman, who were sentenced to qisas for "premeditated murder," were carried out in Karaj. The Iran Human Rights Organization pointed out that reports indicate that Iran, with at least 22 women executed in 2023, is the largest executor of women in the world. In this context, it has been announced that this is the fifth woman executed in 2024, and since 2010, 215 women have been identified and recorded as executed in Iran. The Islamic Republic, as the established system in Iran, is one of the governments with the highest number of executions in the world. In this regard, Hrana, the news agency of the Human Rights Activists in Iran, reported last year that the judiciary of the Islamic Republic has carried out the death sentences of 4,829 Iranians over the past decade, of which more than 40 were children and below the legal age. Hrana cited statistics from Dadgostar, the "database of human rights violators in Iran," reporting that a total of 4,829 people were executed from 2013 to 2023. According to these reports, most of the executed individuals were men, and half of them were related to drug offenses, with one of the 41 executed child offenders being related to drug issues. Skyler Thompson, the Global Advocacy and Response Director at the Human Rights Activists in Iran, stated: "The continuation of executions in the Islamic Republic, especially when trials are marred by violations of due process, is deeply concerning, and the authorities of the Islamic Republic must immediately halt all executions and abolish the death penalty entirely without any preconditions." The judicial system of the Islamic Republic has recently attracted severe global criticism with the issuance of a death sentence for Tomaj Salehi, a protest singer.