Two prisoners were hanged on Saturday, August 10, in the central prison of Mashhad, the state-run Khorasan daily reported Sunday. The state media did not identiry the victims by name but it said they will publish the full report in following days.

In anothre development last Wednesday, five more prisoners were hanged in the notorious Raja’i Shahr (Gohardasht) Prison, in the city of Karaj, northwest of Tehran. The names of those executed were announced as Mohammad-Reza Shekari, Yousof Zakeri, Majid Arabali, Hossein Panjeh-Maryam, and Bahram Tork.

These prisoners, along with a number of other prisoners, had been moved to the solitary confinement prior to their executions.

The regime later returned some of these prisoners back to their cells. The regime usually moves prisoners who are listed to be hanged soon, to solitary confinement where they have to count minutes and hours to have a hangman taking them to the gallows.

The Iranian regime hanged 39 prisoners in July alone. Four were women and there was one public hanging.

The executions took place in the prisons of Birjand, Ghohardasht, Karaj, Kashan, Khondab, Mahshahar, Kelardasht, Orumeh, Noor, Mashhad, Mahabad, Zanjan, Minab, Bandar-Abbas, Borujerd, Shiraz, Tabriz, Gorgan, Dezful, Rasht and Kermanshah.

Iran is the world’s top record holder in per capita executions. More than 3,600 people have been executed in Iran since Rouhani took office in 2013.

UN human rights bodies have condemned the Iranian regime on 65 occasions for its gross human rights violations.

The reason for those condemnations is the violation of basic human rights (especially of minorities), executions, brutal punishments such as amputation and flogging, and degrading behavior with prisoners.

According to the IranHRM Annual Report 2018, at least 285 people were executed in that year, 11 of them in public. They included 10 political prisoners and at least 4 women. Seven individuals were executed for crimes they allegedly committed as minors.

The clerical regime in Iran uses the death penalty as a tool to suppress and silence a disgruntled society the majority of whom live under the poverty line, are unemployed and deprived of freedom of speech.

