- To execute political prisoners, Iran’s judiciary accuses defendants of vaguely defined charges labeled as “national security crimes.” These “crimes” include moharebeh (“enmity against God”), ifsad fil arz (“sowing corruption on Earth”), and baghi (“armed rebellion”).
- It is not only the number of executions that is appalling, but also the nature of some of them. Executions have involved minor children, women and individuals from ethnic and religious minority groups. Although Iran has ratified the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, the government has made no effort to alter the country’s Islamic Penal Code, which allows girls as young as nine to be executed.
- In addition, children, women and men are routinely tortured during interrogations and behind bars. They are forced to confess. They are denied access to lawyers and due process. They are denied family visits and medical care.
- The ruling mullahs of Iran refuse to halt their executions and human rights violations, or to reform their repressive system, because they feel no pressure from the usually moralizing European Union. So they act with full impunity. The informed silence of the EU therefore makes it a willing accessory to their crimes.
- It is beyond repulsive that the EU — the same EU that incessantly lectures the world about human rights — not only ignores the Iranian regime’s unspeakable human violations, but that it also happily continues to do “business as usual” with the leaders of Iran’s cruel and inhuman regime.
