A prisoner who has been sentenced to have his fingers amputated, was flogged Sunday at Urmia Central Prison.
Hadi Rostami, the four fingers of whose right hand are due to be amputated, was flogged 60 times in the 8th Branch of the Implementation Unit of the Urmia Public and Revolutionary court.
In a new case filed against him during his detention in November 2020, Mr. Rostami was charged with “disrupting prison order” and was sentenced to eight months in prison and 60 lashes by Branch 113 of the Urmia Criminal Court.
Sources say the new cases against Rostami are in connection with his suicide attempts and hunger strikes in prison.
Hadi Rostami has attempted suicide twice in the last few months by swallowing glass splinters and is in poor physical condition.
The hand amputation sentence against Hadi Rostami 33, and three other men convicted of robbery, Mehdi Sharfian 37, Mehdi Shahivand 42, and Kasra Karami 40, was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court and referred to the Centre for the Implementation of Sentences in June 2020.
Following the publication of the news, Rostami had been summoned and threatened several times that his sentence would be carried out sooner if the case was reported in the media.
Hadi Rostami has repeatedly denied the charges and retracted his “confession” in court, saying it was made under torture. In a letter written to the head of the judiciary in September 2020, Rostami said interrogators punched, kicked and beat him with various instruments. He said an interrogator demanded he sign a blank piece of paper and he did so only when he reached the point of physical and mental collapse. The prosecution authorities subsequently added details to the paper to make it appear that he had accepted the charges.
The Iranian regime is one of the few states that still uses degrading punishments, even though all international civil and political rights conventions have prohibited the use of inhumane punishments such as execution and flogging.
The regime regularly hands out flogging sentences to protesters, dissidents, and to those charged with adultery and theft, among other things. Flogging is a cruel and degrading punishment and is tantamount to torture.
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