Iran regime mass executes 11 prisoners, including juvenile offender
Wednesday, 25 May 2016/
National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI – Iran’s fundamentalist regime mass executed on Wednesday 11 prisoners in their twenties, including at least one who is believed to have been a minor at the time of his alleged offence. Another three prisoners were executed on Tuesday.
The 11 victims, all aged between 22 and 25, were hanged en masse at dawn on May 25 in the notorious Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) Prison in Karaj, north-west of Tehran.
Among them was Mehdi Rajai who is believed to have been 16 years old at the time of his alleged crime.
The names of eight of the other prisoners are believed to be Mohsen Agha-Mohammadi, Asghar Azizi, Farhad Bakhshayesh, Iman Fatemi-Pour, Javad Khorsandi, Hossein Mohammadi, Masoud Raghadi, and Khosrow Robat-Dasti.
On Tuesday, May 24, three other prisoners in Karaj’s Qezelhesar Prison were hanged. One of them was identified as Ruhollah Roshangar, a married father of two. All three had been behind bars for the past four years.
Also on Wednesday, the mullahs’ regime informed seven Sunni prisoners in Gohardasht that their execution sentences have been handed down by Branch 28 of the regime’s ‘Revolutionary Court.’
The seven prisoners were identified as Davoud Abdollahi, Qasem Abesteh, Khosrow Besharat, Ayoub Karimi, Anvar Khezri, Farhad Salimi, and Kamran Shikheh. All seven have been behind bars since December 7, 2009.
Iran’s fundamentalist regime has sharply increased its rate of executions, carrying out at least 21 hangings in a 48-hour period last week.
Ms. Farideh Karimi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and a human rights activist, on Wednesday called for an urgent response by the United Nations and foreign governments to the appalling state of human rights in Iran.
“The rising number of mass executions in Iran in recent weeks clearly shows that the regime has in no way decided to change its disgraceful human rights record. Any claim of moderation under Hassan Rouhani is simply a myth. It is high time for the United Nations and human rights organizations to speak out against the brutal executions by the mullahs’ regime and send Iran’s human rights dossier before the UN Security Council,” she said.
The latest hangings bring to at least 112 the number of people executed in Iran since April 10. Three of those executed were women and two are believed to have been juvenile offenders.
Iran’s fundamentalist regime earlier this month amputated the fingers of a man in his thirties in Mashhad, the latest in a line of draconian punishments handed down and carried out in recent weeks.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on April 13 that the increasing trend of executions “aimed at intensifying the climate of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the society, especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, demonstrates that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this medieval regime.”
Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 2015 period wrote: “Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at least 743 the year before.”
“Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded” in the Middle East and North Africa, the human rights group said.
There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the executions as examples of “God’s commandments” and “laws of the parliament that belong to the people.”
Iranian Resistance’s call to save political prisoners on hunger strike
Tuesday, 24 May 2016/
National Council of Resistance of Iran/The Iranian Resistance calls on all defenders of human rights, particularly the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel and inhumane punishments, the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, to take urgent and effective action to secure the release of the political prisoners on hunger strike.
Mr. Jafar Azimzadeh, after 25 days of hunger strike, is in dire condition. He has gone on hunger strike to protest the “violation of fundamental rights of teachers and workers”, “their imprisonment and trial on bogus charges”, and to revoke the charge of “acting against security” against labor and teacher activists. On May 21, he was transferred to a hospital outside the prison due to severe feebleness and drop in blood pressure, as well as mal-functioning of the kidney. The Iranian regime’s intelligence agents pressured him in the hospital to end his hunger strike, but he stressed that he would not end his hunger strike until his demands are met. Similarly, on May 23, he was again transferred to the hospital because of the deterioration of his condition, but around midnight they pulled him off his hospital bed and returned him from the hospital to prison.
Mr. Mohammad Sediq Kaboudvand, a Kurdish journalist and a political prisoner in Ward 350 of Evin Prison, has gone on hunger strike in protest to fabrication of charges, ramping up of pressure and harassment in the prison. He has been on hunger strike for 17 days. Despite his dire condition, the regime has increased pressure on him and has summoned him to be tried on fresh charges. Mr. Kaboudvand has been in detention since July 1, 2007 and was condemned by a bogus court to 10 years in prison for “acting against security”. He suffers of several ailments, including cardiac and renal diseases, and the persistence of the present conditions is very dangerous for him.
Political prisoner Mr. Abbas Lessani is exiled in Adelabad Prison of Shiraz and has staged a hunger strike in protest to his continued detention despite the end of his prison term. The mullahs’ judiciary is planning to raise fresh charges against him to prolong his imprisonment.
Political prisoner Mr. Sohail Babadi in Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) Prison has been on a hunger strike since May 16. Despite suffering from renal infection and stone, he is deprived of the necessary medical treatment. He was arrested in June 2012 for posting sarcastic pieces on his Facebook page and was condemned to five years in prison for insulting ‘sanctities.’ Regime’s judiciary henchmen then added another seven years to his prison term on charges of assembling and colluding against the national security and insulting the supreme leader.
Mr. Shir-Mohammad Shirani, a Baluchi political prisoner who has been exiled to a prison in Ardabil, went on hunger strike on May 2 to protest being deprived of medical care. After he announced his hunger strike, the torturers badly beat him up and transferred him to solitary confinement with a broken head and while bleeding. He was arrested in 2008 and underwent torture in solitary confinement for two years. He was then condemned to 22 years in prison and transferred from a prison in Zahedan to Ardabil. He suffers of renal and other diseases, but intelligence ministry agents prevent him from receiving medical treatment.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran/May 24, 2016
