By Friederike Heine and Parisa Hafezi
BERLIN, Aug 9 (Reuters) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk is extremely concerned that Iranian authorities have reportedly executed 29 people in the last two days, a spokesperson said on Friday.
“This represents an alarmingly high number of executions in such a short period of time,” UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Liz Throssell said.
Though the death toll could not be independently verified by the United Nations, she said the reported executions took the overall count to at least 345 this year, including 15 women.
Iran’s Minorities Disproportionately Targeted in Crackdowns, UN Mission Reports
Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said on Wednesday that 29 men including two Afghans and a member of the Baluch ethnic minority had been executed for murder, rape and drug-related crimes in Ghezel Hesar Prison in the city of Karaj.
It said at least 87 people had been executed in Iranian prisons since the election of Iran‘s relatively moderate new President Masoud Pezeshkian in July.
Throssel said it was particularly troubling that the majority of people executed had been found guilty of drug-related offencesand that minorities including Kurds, Hawassi Arabs and Baluch were disproportionately affected.
“Imposing the death penalty for offences not involving intentional killing is incompatible with international human rights norms and standards,” she said.
(Reporting by Friederike Heine and Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Rachel More)
