Iranian authorities continue to issue death sentences and cruel punishments.
Iranian authorities are exposing their “utterly brutal sense of justice” by continuing to carry out “cruel and inhuman” corporal punishments including floggings, amputations, and forced blinding, Amnesty International charged on January 18, 2017.
Hundreds are routinely sentenced to death in Iran each year for non-violent drug offences. In a recent case fifteen members of a drug-trafficking gang were tried in the 2nd Branch of the Karaj Revolutionary Court. Fourteen of the group members were sentenced to death while the remaining gang member who is a woman was sentenced to 11 years in prison, according to the state-run Rokna news agency.
In another development the same state- media reported that Iranian Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of a young woman identified only as Mozhgan. She had been earlier acquitted of intentional murder and was sentenced to financially compensate for the victim for unintentional murder. The ruling however, was rejected by the supreme court. “I was suspicious of my husband’s behavior. I went to the kitchen and took a knife and pointed it at my husband’s chest just to frighten him”, she said in court. “But I don’t know why my husband came towards me and the knife penetrated his chest”, she added. “My husband opened the house door and went towards the stairs but then fell to the ground. I did not intend to kill him”, Mozhgan said.
Absence of classification of unintentional murders in Iran lead to capital punishment for everyone committed murder, intentional or unintentional.
In yet another case a Kurdish student activist, Zamaneh Zivi, was sentenced to 50 lashes and fined on charges of “disrupting public order.”
An informed source said that the Kurd student who is studying law at Payame Noor University in Saghez, was arrested on November 6 by security forces at her home following street celebrations in support of the Kurdistan independence referendum.
This student was subjected to an ambiguous legal procedure in which she was charged and tried for acting against national security, participating in illegal gatherings and disrupting order.
