Three women among 32 executed in Iran

Iranian officials executed three women on Wednesday for killing their husbands. They were among the 32 persons put to death in the past week alone, according to the Iran Human Rights Group.

One of them was a former child bride who had been found guilty of killing the guy she had married when she was only 15 years old. According to reports, authorities have executed twice as many individuals so far this year as they did last year, signalling a significant increase in their use of the death penalty.

According to rights organisations, Iran also has the highest rate of executions of women worldwide, with the majority of these victims reportedly having been found guilty of murdering their spouses.

According to the Iran Human Rights Group, former child bride Soheila Abadi was hung in prison on Wednesday after being found guilty of murdering the man she had wed 10 years earlier when she was just 15 years old.

According to reports, “family disagreements” served as the murder’s motivation, according to the sentencing court. The group said that two further women who were murdered on Wednesday had also been found guilty of killing their husbands.

Activists claim that although many of the cases contain allegations of domestic violence, Iranian courts usually fail to consider this.

Since Iranian authorities do not formally declare every case in which the death penalty has been used, precise information on the number of executions are not available. In a study released in April by two rights organisations, it was found that only 16.5 percent of executions believed to have taken place in Iran in 2017 were reported by authorities.

According to reports this year, the usage of the death penalty has increased much more since then. Amnesty International, a human rights organisation, accused Iran this week of engaging in a “horrific” execution binge in recent months. More than 250 individuals were reportedly put to death in the first half of 2022, more than double the amount during the same period in the previous year.

According to Diana Eltahawy, deputy regional director at Amnesty International, “the state machinery is carrying out killings on a wide scale across the country in an atrocious assault on the right to life.”

According to the rights organisation, some of those found guilty have been executed in large numbers, including twelve persons on June 15 in one prison and the same number on June 6 in another prison.

Statistics also show a disproportionate number of ethnic minorities. Baluchis make up more than one in four of those Amnesty International believes have been executed so far this year, although making up only about 5% of Iran’s total population.