Secret mass-executions continue in Iran

Iran Human Rights: According to reliable sources that Iran Human Rights (IHR) has been in contact with, 25 prisoners of the Ghezel Hesar prison (Karaj, west of Tehran) were executed yesterday July 3rd.

According to this report all those executed were convicted of drug-related offences.

According to the group "Iranian activists for Human Rights and Democracy" 7 people were hanged in Tehran’s Evin prison yesterday July 3rd. According to this report six of the prisoners were transferred from the Ghezel Hesar prison while one was transferred from the Rajaei Shahr prison to Evin. One of the men who was not identified by name was an Afghan citizen. The other six who were executed were identified as: "Hamid Nader", "Seyed Abolfazl Azimitabar", "Mehdi Bashir", "Javad Abdollahvand" (54), "Asghar", and "Masoud Ali Moradi" (30; transferred from Rajaei Shahr prison).

It is not clear whether the six Ghezel Hesar prisoners who were hanged in Evin were in addition to the 25 prisoners executed yesterday or not.

Iranian authorities have not reported these executions.

Several human rights groups had reported earlier about secret mass executions in the Khorasan prisons. But according to our reports secret mass-executions have been going on in several other Iranian prisons such as Ghezel Hesar.

It is believed that the number of the executions in Ghezel Hesar prison might even exceed those in the Vakilabad prison of Mashhad.

According to the annual report of IHR on the death penalty in 2010in Iran, at least 474 people were executed as a result of the secret mass-executionssecretly in the Khorasan province in 2010. At least 205 of the executions were not included in the annual report due to on going investigations. Most of these people have been onvicted of drug trafficking.

Prosecutor of the southern Khorasan province confirmed in a press conference last week that 140 prisoners convicted of drug trafficking had been executed in that region in the priod of March 2010 to March 2011. Majority of these executions had not been reported by the Iranian media.

IHR urges the newly appointed Special Rapporteur Mr. Ahmad Shaheed to pay special attention to the reports concerning the secret mass-executions in the Iranian prisons.