Human Rights in Iran – Wednesday, March 1, 2023 – A prisoner charged with drug-related offenses was executed at Karaj Central Prison.
According to the report Human Rights in Iran, Mohammad Safari, a prisoner accused of drug offenses and imprisoned in Karaj Central Prison, was executed at dawn on Tuesday, February 28, 2023.
Quoting an informed source, in an interview with the reporter of Human Rights Reporter in Iran: “Mohammad Safari was arrested a few years ago on charges of transporting and possession of a type of narcotics and sentenced to death after judicial proceedings.”
It should be noted that on February 28, 2023, Human Rights in Iran announced the execution of another prisoner, Maziar Soltanzadeh, a resident of Azimiyeh, Karaj, charged with drug-related offenses and imprisoned in corridor 3 of Karaj Central Prison.
The execution of these two prisoners has not been announced by the official media inside Iran until these reports have been made.
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.
