Iran's 'execution binge'

By Ethel C. Fenig

It seems that the UN's General Assembly's and Columbia University's favorite speaker, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presides over a country that is not only building nuclear weapons to destroy hundreds of thousands of perceived enemies outside Iran but is also on an "execution binge" against its own people.

According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Since the beginning of the New Year, Iran has hanged 47 prisoners, or an average of about one person every eight hours. Iran executes more people per capita than any other country, and in absolute numbers, is second only to China.

(snip)

According to information received by and reported by the Campaign, the number of executions in Iran is apparently even higher than previously reported. Multiple and reliable reports indicate that secret, mass executions of more than a hundred have taken place in Mashad's Vakilabad prison.

Actually, in Iranian parlance, many of those executed aren't really Iranian; though they live in Iran, a large proportion of those executed are Kurds while others were from areas populated by other non Iranian ethnic groups. Juvenile criminals under 18 are also part of these mass judicial killings.

Torture is routinely used to extract confessions; after confessing there is a swift show trial, the victim is hung soon thereafter.

"The Iranian Judiciary is on an execution binge orchestrated by the intelligence and security agencies," stated Aaron Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Campaign.

"The execution of Kurdish activists, without fair trials and following torture, increasingly appears as a systematic, politically motivated process," he said.

One prisoner

reported in a letter to international organizations that he had been tortured while in prisons run by the Intelligence Ministry and the Revolutionary Guards, but according to Amnesty International, his request for an investigation was denied. He had refused to confess to committing any of the crimes for which he was convicted.

The international lack of reporting and protests against these horrors are telling. The silence is deafening.