NEW YORK – A surge in the number of executions in Iran over the past year signals a concerning trend in the country where the human rights situation has continued to deteriorate, a UN rights expert, has said.
Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, said on Tuesday in New York that Iran executed more than 852 people in the 12-month period between July 2013 and June this year.
He said those executed included women, journalists and political activists and it executed 580 people in 2012 and 676 people in 2011.
“The concern really is that there is a clear surge in the executions taking place in the country,” he said.
Shaheed noted that the trend was occurring parallel to Iran sending mixed signals about its intentions to amend its human rights policies.
He also said that restrictions on the right to assembly, freedom of expression and women’s rights are also rampant in the country.
The comments came two days after Rayhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old Iranian woman, was executed by hanging Saturday for the murder of a man she said she had killed while defending herself from an attempted rape. (dpa/NAN)
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