Iran executed 36 people on August 6-7, including 26 in a group execution in one prison, a rights group said on August 7, a day after Tehran faced international condemnation for executing an Iranian activist arrested during the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group said 26 men, including two Afghan nationals, were executed in a group hanging in Ghezelhesar prison in Karaj outside Tehran.
IHR said that a group execution on this scale in Iran was unprecedented, with the last comparable example dating back to 2009.
Those executed had been convicted of murder as well as drug-related and rape charges, according to both IHR and the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
Human rights groups have repeatedly accused Iran of making use of the death penalty to instill fear in society in the wake of the 2022 protests that swept the country after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
"Without an immediate response from the international community, hundreds of individuals could become victims of the Islamic republic's killing machine in the coming months," IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said.
In addition to the 26 men executed at Ghezelhesar prison, three other men were executed in Karaj's city prison, one man was executed in Sabsevar in Khorasan Razavi Province, three were executed in Shiraz in Fars Province, and three were executed in Badar Abbas in Hormozgan Province, according to the CHRI.
“These are only the known executions; there are often additional executions that take place without public knowledge,” the organization said in a news release.
Reza Rasaei, 34, was the 10th man executed by Iran in connection with the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests that erupted in September 2022 after the death of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who was arrested for an alleged breach of the country's strict dress code for women.
SEE ALSO: Iran Executes Protester After Conviction In 'Grossly Unfair' TrialRasaei, a member of the Kurdish ethnic minority and follower of the Yarsan faith, was convicted in connection with the death of an officer for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) during unrest in the Kurdish city of Sahneh. He denied the charges.
Amnesty International said he was executed in secret with neither his family nor his lawyer being given prior notice. It said his family was then forced to bury his body in a remote area far from his home.
"Iranian authorities have carried out the abhorrent arbitrary execution in secret of a young man who was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention...and then sentenced to death after a sham trial," said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
She said the execution was another instance of Iran using the death penalty as a "tool of political repression to instill fear among the population."
France's Foreign Ministry on August 7 condemned Rasaei's execution and reiterated its "unchanging opposition to the death penalty in all places and circumstances," calling it an "unfair and inhumane punishment."
IHR said Iran has now executed at least 345 people this year and there has been no let-up in the use of the death penalty since reformist President Masud Pezeshkian was sworn in last week.