(New York, February 27,
2006) – Hojat Zamani, a member of the opposition Mojadehin Khalq Organization
outlawed in Iran, was
executed on February 7 at Karaj’s Gohardasht prison, Human Rights Watch said today, after a trial that
did not meet international standards.
Human Rights Watch
also expressed grave concern for the safety of other members of the Mojahedin
Khalq Organization imprisoned in Iran, including Saeed Masouri,
Gholamhussein Kalbi, and Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi.
Following the
election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year, the number of executions in
Iran has increased sharply. According
to news articles in the Iranian media, between January 20 and February 20 alone,
the judicial authorities executed 10 prisoners and condemned another 21 to the
death sentence.
The Iranian
judiciary accused Zamani of involvement in a bomb explosion in Tehran in 1988 which
killed three people and injured 22. He was condemned to death in 2004, after a
court hearing that did not meet international standards for a fair trial,
because Zamani was not allowed access to his lawyers.
Zamani was taken
from his cell by the prison authorities and hanged inside the Gohardasht prison
on February 7, but his execution was not confirmed until a week later, after
mounting international protests, by Minister of Justice Jamal
Karimirad.
In addition, Human
Rights Watch fears the imminent execution of three persons accused
of involvement in hijacking an airplane in 2001. They are Khaled Hardani,
Farhang Pour Mansouri and Shahram Pour Mansouri. At the time of the alleged
hijacking, Shahram Pour Mansouri was only 17 years old.
The Convention on
the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed before
the age of 18. These treaties also prohibit the use of torture and cruel,
inhuman, or degrading punishments. Iran is a party to both
treaties.
Human Rights Watch
called on the Iranian judiciary to stop applying the death penalty and to abide
by its obligations under international treaties, including abolition of death
penalty for juveniles and implementation of fair trial standards.
Iranian human rights
activists have repeatedly expressed serious concerns that under President
Ahmadinejad the government will increasingly resort to violent means to suppress
dissent. These worries are accentuated by the presence of several ministers in
the cabinet who are suspected of grave human rights violations. The Interior
Minister, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, for example, is suspected of crimes against
humanity for his involvement in summary and arbitrary execution of thousands of
political prisoners in 1988.
For background
information detailing those crimes, please see the December 2005 Human Rights
Watch report, “Ministers of Murder: Iran's New Security Cabinet”:
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/iran1205/
... Payvand News - 2/28/06 ... --
