Saeed Malekpour is a software programmer who has been in prison since 2008. He has been condemned to death and is waiting for the sentence to be carried out, which could happen at any moment. He returned to visit his family after living in Canada for four years, but was arrested for having written a software program to load images onto the internet and was accused of encouraging the publication of pornographic material online. In January the Supreme Court of Tehran confirmed his death sentence for agitation against the regime and insulting the holiness of Islam. An international campaign has been mounted to save his life.
In 2010 the same thing happened to Sakineh Ashtiani, who was condemned to be stoned to death for adultery and complicity in the murder of her husband. This turned the spotlight on the lack of human rights in the Islamic Republic, but after the international outcry the sentence was suspended. She remains in prison and is now in danger of being hanged rather than being stoned.
Death sentences are on the rise Iran mainly for drug trafficking, but also for moharebeh or enmity to God, including sodomy. According to Iran Human Rights (IHR) figures, the number of executions was at their highest in 2011 than for the past decade. They presented their 2011 Report a few days before the March 2 parliamentary elections, which revealed that 675 people were executed and of these, 65 were executed in city squares. Iranian authorities released information on 416 of these cases, while the remaining cases were communicated directly to IHR by witnesses, lawyers and family members. As the report states, at least 70 additional executions took place over the past year, but it has not been possible to include them in the report because of difficulties related to confirming the cases any degree of certainty.
Narcotics covered 81% of the sentences carried out, but it is difficult establishing the fairness of the trials, which take place behind closed doors. In some cases death sentences were passed on people who were originally arrested for anti-regime protests. This is what happened to Zahra Bahrami, who was arrested at the end of 2009 when protests erupted after the re-election of Ahmadinejad. Bahrami was initially accused of moharebeh, but was condemned to hang for drug possession. Regime critics and dissenters are frequently charged with apostasy or “enmity to God” in current understanding of the law and it is enough for the suspect to belong to an opposition group to unleash the death penalty.
The new Islamic penal code, ratified in its final version two weeks ago by the Council of Guardians, has introduced some modifications, such as a ban on the death penalty for minors. It is a change in form rather than substance, because it refers to the maturity of the young person, an article of the new law, which can be evaluated on a case by case basis by the judge, regardless of the accused being younger than 18 and taking into account the type of crime committed.
Arrests of political and human rights activists in the run-up to the March 2 elections have increased. Blogger Mehdi Khazali was condemned to 13 years and 10 months in prison on February 7 and is currently on hunger strike. He wrote a letter to the authorities from Evin Prison asking that should he die the autopsy on his body be conducted by doctors linked to international organizations. It is possible to die in an Iranian prison even without being condemned to death. In his letter Khazali wrote of the case of the journalist Hoda Saber, who was also held in Evin and who was moved to the infirmary and never left there after an 8-day hunger strike.
At least 65 people were arrested at the beginning of the year just in the province of Khuzestan alone, home to the country’s Arab minority. Two local activists allegedly died after being tortured in prison, according to Human Rights Watch. Most opposition groups called for the election to be boycotted, protested the growing number of political prisoners and the ongoing house arrest of opposition leaders Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who have been denied freedom of movement for over a year. Karroubi has been isolated from his family since December after saying the 2012 elections would be fraudulent.
Translated by Francesca Simmons