Washington Center For Human Rights condemn the execution of Javed Dehghan, an Iranian belonging to the Baloch minority, a few days ago. WCHR fear that the recent alarming increase in executions of prisoners of the Baloch minority in Iran will continue.
We are shocked that the execution of Mr. Dehghan on 30 January was carried out despite the urgent appeal to the Iranian government to halt it, and despite appeals from the UN Human Rights Office and the civil society.
Mr. Dehghan’s death sentence followed serious violations of his fair trial rights, including allegations of torture, prolonged solitary confinement, and forced confession. We are concerns that the Iranian authorities doesn’t appear to have investigated it.
Mr. Dehghan was arrested on 5 June 2015 on charges of involvement in an armed group and in an attack that killed two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers.
Mr. Dehghan was forcibly disappeared for three months after his arrest and was held in solitary confinement in an undisclosed detention center, before being transferred to Zahedan Central Prison in Sistan and Baluchistan. He was then taken back and forth for several months between the prison and an unknown facility, where he was forced under torture to “confess” to the allegations. He was denied access to a lawyer all this time.
In May 2017, Mr. Dehghan was sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in Zahedan. The court reportedly failed to investigate these allegations, and also relied in part on Dehghan’s confession to reach its verdict. The appeal was dismissed, and on 25 January his lawyer was informed that the Supreme Court had rejected another application for judicial review.
Dehghan’s execution is one of many against prisoners from Iran’s Baloch minority.
According reports, at least 21 Baloch prisoners have been executed in Zahedan, Mashhad and Isfahan prisons since mid-December 2020.
Many of those executed were convicted on drug or national security charges, following flawed legal procedures. It was reported that 124 prisoners were on death row in Zahedan Central Prison alone, including those whose crimes did not involve premeditated murder.
Washington Center For Human Rights calls on the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately halt executions and cancel all death sentences which contradict international human rights law.
We urge the Iranian government to urgently implement a moratorium on the death penalty as a first step towards its abolition.