Two prisoners were hanged on Wednesday morning, February 12, 2020 in Adelabad Prison of Shiraz.
The two prisoners had been convicted in a common case of murder and rape.
Hadi Mahi and Sadeq Akbarpour were arrested in 2016 and subsequently sentenced to death. They were detained all the time in Adelabad Prison.
The news of the hangings of these two prisoners has not been announced by the state media.
Iran’s deliberate use of capital punishment has been a constant source of international outrage and condemnation. According to several independent international bodies, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran and Amnesty International, Iran is the leading state in executions per capita, second only to China in terms of figures. Iran also tops the charts in the number of executions of minors and juvenile offenders.
Some 3,800 persons, including dozens of juveniles and 105 women have been executed during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure.
Iran Human Rights Monitor has recorded the executions of at least 273 individuals in 2019.
They included at least, six political prisoners, nine juvenile offenders and 16 women. At least 13 executions were carried out in public.
The Iranian regime uses execution as a tool to suppress and silence a disgruntled public the majority of whom live under the poverty line, are unemployed and deprived of freedom of expression.
In March 2019, the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, appointed a former notorious judge responsible for mass executions as the head of judiciary to keep a lid on social unrest.
Since then Ebrahim Raisi, who has participated in “death commissions” that ordered the 1988 massacre of thousands of prisoners, at least 173 people have been executed across Iran.
On March 5, 2019, the U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino denounced Raisi’s appointment as the head of Iran’s all-powerful judiciary calling it a “disgrace” and a “mockery of legal process” since Raisi is responsible for the deaths of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s, including the 1988 massacre.
