Iran executed a 'staggering' total of at least 834 people last year, the highest number since 2015 as capital punishment surged in the Islamic Republic, two rights groups revealed
WARNING: Graphic content and descriptions of executionsIn recent years many countries around the world have abolished or simply stopped handing out the death penalty.
The number of executions was up some 43 per cent on 2022, and marked only the second time in two decades that more than 800 executions were recorded in a year, Norway-based Iran Human Rights and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty said in a joint report. An Iranian policeman ties the noose around the neck of Majid Ghasemi before being publicly hanged in east Tehran 29 September 2002
Crowds are encouraged to watch as the killings are carried out - with multiple executions often put on at once and the horrific scenes even televised. The savage practice sees the condemned buried in sand, usually up to the waist for men and up to the chest for women, before a crowd circles them and pelts them with rocks.
But there are only a few recorded cases of such a feat being successfully achieved - and reports suggest that women who have miraculously managed to free themselves were forced back into the hole and killed anyway. Iranian authorities often deploy a rotary guillotine device to chop off the fingers of those convicted or robbery, burglary and other charges
Advertisement In May 2023, Iran executed Yousef Mehrdad and Seyed Sadrollah Fazeli Zare in Arak Prison for 'insulting the prophet' and 'blasphemy' related to their peaceful expression on Telegram channels. Chaab, also known as Habib Asiod, was kidnapped in Turkey by Iranian agents, tortured, and coerced to confess on state television.
An international cohort of more than 85,000 athletes signed a petition to stay his execution with world leaders, including then US President Donald Trump, calling for his conviction to be overturned. 'With more than 3,500 hours of torture, psychedelic drugs, and physiological and psychological pressure methods, they took away my will.
Even for those who do not face the death penalty, the torturous punishments meted out by prison authorities are still skin-crawling. Advertisement Others have undergone savage beatings and been lashed with whips, with one woman describing how she was given 74 lashes for refusing to wear a hijab.