IN IRAN DEATH GOES ON….HUGH TOMLINSON….
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/profile/Hugh-Tomlinson
Iran has increased the number of public executions and amputations it carries out, taking advantage of the international focus on Gaza to reduce prison overcrowding and to issue a warning before elections in June.At least 81 people have been hanged in the past ten days.
There had been a lull during the summer for Ramadan and the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran. Iran often uses periods of unrest elsewhere to accelerate the rate of executions, and the crisis in Gaza has provided such a distraction.
When the Arab Spring broke out last year, the regime cheered on the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt from the sidelines while clamping down on its domestic opposition and putting hundreds of Iranians to death.
Western holidays, particularly the lethargic news period between Christmas and new year, are also busy times for Iranian hangmen.
“We have seen in the past that every time the international community’s attention is elsewhere we see a spike in executions across Iran. Rates are always higher when the West is distracted,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights, the non-government organisation.
Human rights groups have verified almost 500 executions across Iran this year and believe the true figure is higher. The Islamic Republic executes more people each year than any nation except China, and has the highest rate of executions per capita.
Public executions have increased since the protests that followed President Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009. That year nine people were put to death in public. By last year, that figure had reached 65 and is set to be higher this year.
The condemned are hanged in public squares, from bridges and cranes. Iranians are encouraged to bring their children to executions to ram home the message. A ban on photographing hangings was lifted last year.
Recent days have also seen a new trend in public amputations, which are usually conducted inside prisons.
Two men convicted of theft had four fingers from their right hands cut off in public in the central city of Yazd this week. The city’s public prosecutor has warned that further public amputations are planned.
This campaign of intimidation is intended to set the scene ahead of presidential elections to select Mr Ahmadinejad’s successor in June. The regime cannot afford a repeat of events in 2009 and preparations are already under way for a huge security operation around polling day. Corpses hanging in the town square are a potent reminder of state power.
“Recently we have seen hangings spread around the same city for the widest impact. Everything is designed to spread fear. It is the regime’s chief tool of repression,” said Mr Amiry-Moghaddam.
Most of those put to death are convicted of drug offences, though families of the condemned often complain that their relatives were tortured to extract confessions or denied access to a lawyer.
Lying on the trafficking route from Afghanistan to Turkey, Iran accounts for the largest quantity of heroin, opium and morphine seizures worldwide each year. In Iranian cities along the country’s eastern border the jails are bulging with drug smugglers and addicts.
In Vakilabad prison, in the northeastern city of Mashhad, about 2,000 inmates are on death row. An investigation by The Times in 2010 found that Iran’s Supreme Court had begun approving mass executions at the jail without review in an effort to ease pressure on the prison system. Witnesses said 63 men were hanged at the jail in a single day in groups as large as ten.
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