Amnesty International is protesting what it calls a “staggering execution spree” in Iran that has seen almost 700 people put to death so far this year.
“Iranian authorities are believed to have executed an astonishing 694 people between 1 January and 15 July, 2015,” says the rights group, calling it an unprecedented spike.
“At this shocking pace, Iran is set to surpass the total number of executions in the country” recorded by Amnesty for the whole of 2014.
Said Boumedouha, deputy head of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Program, says the spike “paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale”.
Amnesty says the surge “reveals just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world when it comes to the use of the death penalty.”
— AFP
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