Human Rights in Iran – Wednesday, March 1, 2023 – The execution of a prisoner charged with drug offenses was carried out at Karaj Central Prison.
According to the report of Human Rights in Iran, at dawn on Tuesday, February 28, 2023, Maziar Soltanzadeh,resident of Azimiyeh, Karaj, imprisoned in corridor 3 of Karaj Central Prison, whose death sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court, was executed for drug-related offenses.
“Maziar Soltanzadeh was arrested by police in Azimiyeh, Karaj, in 2018 on charges of transporting 14 KG of meth and after judicial proceedings, he was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court of Alborz Province. His sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court.”, according to an informed source, in an interview with the reporter of Human Rights in Iran.
“Maziar Soltanzadeh was arrested by police in Azimiyeh, Karaj, in 2018 on charges of transporting 14 kilograms of meth and after judicial proceedings, he was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court of Alborz Province. His sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court.”, according to an informed source, in an interview with the reporter of Human Rights in Iran.
It should be noted that given the execution of Maziar Soltanzadeh, it is likely that the number of prisoners executed in Karaj Central Prison is higher than that.
After the appointment of Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ezhe’ei as the head of the judiciary and his claim to speed up the execution of old cases and as a result the execution of death sentences with the aim of reducing the country’s criminal crimes, this process lead to the protest of Amnesty International by publishing a report on 27th June, 2022, explaining the situation of the implementation of death sentences in the first 6 months of 2022 in Iran.
Also, on August 23, 2022, Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights, protested the increasing trend of issuing and carrying out death sentences in Iran in his periodic report on human rights violations in Iran.
Due to the lack of transparency of the Iranian authorities, it is difficult to find out the actual number of executions in this country, and the number is certainly much higher than the announced figure.
Issuing and executing death sentences violates international human rights documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
