Over 10 People Executed in Iran Each Week, UN Rights Office Says

The UN human rights office has called for a halt in executions in Iran, where it said 209 people were executed so far this year amid continuing protests against the country's clerical establishment.

"The UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk today expressed dismay at the frighteningly high number of executions this year in Iran," Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing in Geneva on May 9. 

"On average so far this year, over 10 people are put to death each week in Iran, making it one of the world's highest executors," she said, adding most were for drug-related offences.

The previous day, the Iranian judiciary's news website Mizan reported that two men had been hanged after being sentenced to death for blasphemy, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.

“The international community must show with its reaction that executions for expressing an opinion is intolerable,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, who leads the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights. 

Amnesty International warned that without "urgent" international action, the Iranian authorities "will continue to deploy the death penalty to torment and terrorize the entire population, crush protests & other forms of dissent, and enforce silence and subservience through brute force."

Meanwhile, Haalvsh, a group that monitors rights violations in Iran's south-eastern Baluchistan province, said that at least 26 menbers of the Sunni Baluch ethnic minority had been executed in the previous nine days.

The group quoted the families of those executed as saying that, in addition to their unfair detention, there was evidence that the inmates were subjected to pressure to give forced "confessions."