Dec. 5
IRAN:
Iran considers ending death penalty for drug offenses
Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Human Rights Council, said
that Iran is looking to end the death penalty for drug related cases, which he
said account for 80% of the country's executions. His comments followed
statements by the head of Iran's judiciary, who earlier said that the country's
drug laws were not effective and need to be reformed.
Iranian judicial officials have once again stated publicly that the country's
criminal prosecution and punishment of drug-related crime need to be reformed.
In a Dec. 4 English-language interview with France 24's Sanam Shantyaei, Javad
Larijani said, "No one is happy to see the number of executions is high. And
it's a sad story that we have this much drug related crime. ... According to
the existing law, ... they are receiving capital punishment."
Javad Larijani continued, 'We are crusading to change this law. If we are
successful, if the law passes the parliament, almost 80% of the executions will
go away. This is big news for us, regardless of the Western criticism." His
statements were picked up and translated by Iran's Persian-language Fars News
Agency.
While not speaking as explicitly as Javad Larijani, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani,
Javad Larijani's brother and the head of Iran's judiciary, addressed the need
to change the country's drug laws. During a Dec. 2 meeting of judiciary
officials, he said, "On the issue of drugs and trafficking, it feels necessary
that we need a change in the legislation because the ultimate goal of the law
should be implementing justice, while in reality, this goal is often not
realized."
This is not the 1st time that Iran's judiciary has proposed changing the
punishment for drug-related crimes, or at least modifying how the punishment is
implemented.
In May 2014, current deputy head of Iran's judiciary Gholam-Ali Mohseni-Ejei,
while speaking as the country's top prosecutor, said at a meeting of the High
Council for Human Rights in Iran, "Unfortunately, the high number of executions
in this country is related to drugs smuggling and the heavy penalties for this
infraction. If, within the existing laws, we can review it in such a way that
we help the intelligence officials to punish the leaders of these smuggling
networks, and for the rest, we reconsider [their punishment], the goals of the
system can be better realized."
According to conservative Etelaat newspaper, Sadegh Larijani did not advocate
softness on drug smuggling. He said that drug smugglers need to be "dealt with
seriously" but conceded, "Unfortunately, today, with respect to drugs and
drug-related laws, we see that these laws have no impact."
According to Amnesty International, with 369 in 2013, Iran was 2nd only to
China in state executions. Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States were in
3rd, 4th, and 5th place, respectively. Iran has performed a record number of
executions in 2014. According to the Iran Documentation Human Rights Center,
there have been 647, though the center claims that Iran has acknowledged only
229 of them.
(source: al-monitor.com)
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