Iran executed 975 people in 2024 in ‘horrifying escalation' of death penalty, damning report says
Iran executed as many as 975 people last year in a 'horrifying escalation' of the use of the death penalty, human rights groups claimed on Thursday.
A report released by Norway-based Iran Human Rights and France-based Together Against the Death Penalty said the number of executions was 17 per cent more than in 2023 and the highest in over a decade. There were at least 31 women and one child among those sent to the gallows for murder, rape and mostly drug charges last year, the report claimed.
The executed prisoners included protesters, Kurdish dissenters and foreigners, including 80 Afghan nationals.
Here are the report's key highlights:
At least 975 people were executed in 2024, a 17 per cent increase compared to 834 in 2023. Only 95 executions, or less than 10 per cent, were officially announced.
At least 419 executions, or about 43 per cent, were for murder charges.
At least 503 people, or 52 per cent, were executed for drug-related crimes.
At least one child offender was among those executed and three other possible cases were still being investigated.
At least 31 women were executed, the highest number in at least 17 years.
At least two protesters were executed for murder related charges.
At least 31 people, amongst them nine Kurdish political prisoners, and a political dissident abducted from a neighbouring country were executed for security-related charges.
At least 649 prisoners sentenced to death for murder charges were forgiven by the families of the murder victims as per qisas laws.
At least 80 Afghan nationals were executed in 2024 compared to 25 in 2023 and 16 in 2022.
At least 5 of those executed suffered from psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.
At least 534 executions in 2024 and more than 5,075 executions since 2010 were based on death sentences issued by the Revolutionary Courts.
The data "reveals a horrifying escalation in the use of the death penalty by the Islamic Republic in 2024", the report said as the rights groups accused Tehran of using the death penalty as a "central tool of political oppression".
"These executions are part of the Islamic Republic's war against its own people to maintain its grip on power," Iran Human Rights director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement. "Five people were executed on average every single day in the last three months of the year as the threat of war between Iran and Israel escalated."
According to the report, the Iranian government officially announced only 95 executions, a significant decline from 2023 when nearly 15 per cent of the executions were disclosed.
"Despite repeated calls from the international community, this deliberate lack of transparency not only undermines accountability but also conceals the true scale of the state's use of the death penalty," the report said.
The report came about a month after the UN human rights chief said Iran had executed 901 prisoners in 2024. Volker Turk said it was "deeply disturbing that yet again we see an increase in the number of people subjected to the death penalty in Iran year-on-year'. "It is high time Iran stemmed this ever-swelling tide of executions,' he said.
Mr Turk urged Iranian authorities to halt further executions and place a moratorium on the use of capital punishment to eventually abolish the practice.
"The death penalty is incompatible with the fundamental right to life and raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,' he said. 'And, to be clear, it can never be imposed for conduct that is protected under international human rights law.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Rhyl Journal
33 minutes ago
- Rhyl Journal
Warning on Iran nuclear obligations as further US talks planned
Iran reacted immediately by saying it will establish a new enrichment facility after the vote against it. The announcement said the facility will be 'in a secure location' and that 'other measures are also being planned'. 'The Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to respond to this political resolution,' the Iranian foreign ministry and the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said in a joint statement announcing the decision. Nineteen countries on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board, which represents the agency's member nations, voted for the resolution, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity. Russia, China and Burkina Faso opposed it, 11 abstained and two did not vote. In the draft resolution seen by The Associated Press, the board of governors renewed a call on Iran to provide answers 'without delay' in a long-running investigation into uranium traces found at several locations that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites. Western officials suspect the uranium traces could provide evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons programme until 2003. The resolution was put forward by France, the UK, Germany and the United States. 'Iran's many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the agency with full and timely co-operation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran … constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its safeguards agreement,' the draft resolution says. Under the so-called safeguards obligations, which are part of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Iran is legally bound to declare all nuclear material and activities, and allow IAEA inspectors to verify that none of it is being diverted from peaceful uses. I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th. — Badr Albusaidi – بدر البوسعيدي (@badralbusaidi) June 12, 2025 The draft resolution also finds that the IAEA's 'inability … to provide assurance that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful gives rise to questions that are within the competence of the United Nations Security Council, as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security'. The vote comes at a sensitive time as tensions in the region have been rising, with the US State Department announcing on Wednesday that it is drawing down the presence of people who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East. It also comes as the US and Iran have been holding talks on Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear programme. Oman's foreign minister said earlier on Thursday that a sixth round of negotiations will be held in his country on Sunday. The draft resolution makes a direct reference to the US-Iran talks, stressing its 'support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear programme, including the talks between the United States and Iran, leading to an agreement that addresses all international concerns related to Iran's nuclear activities, encouraging all parties to constructively engage in diplomacy'.
Glasgow Times
33 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
Warning on Iran nuclear obligations as further US talks planned
Iran reacted immediately by saying it will establish a new enrichment facility after the vote against it. The announcement said the facility will be 'in a secure location' and that 'other measures are also being planned'. 'The Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to respond to this political resolution,' the Iranian foreign ministry and the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said in a joint statement announcing the decision. Nineteen countries on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board, which represents the agency's member nations, voted for the resolution, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity. Russia, China and Burkina Faso opposed it, 11 abstained and two did not vote. In the draft resolution seen by The Associated Press, the board of governors renewed a call on Iran to provide answers 'without delay' in a long-running investigation into uranium traces found at several locations that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites. Western officials suspect the uranium traces could provide evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons programme until 2003. The resolution was put forward by France, the UK, Germany and the United States. 'Iran's many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the agency with full and timely co-operation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran … constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its safeguards agreement,' the draft resolution says. Under the so-called safeguards obligations, which are part of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Iran is legally bound to declare all nuclear material and activities, and allow IAEA inspectors to verify that none of it is being diverted from peaceful uses. I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th. — Badr Albusaidi – بدر البوسعيدي (@badralbusaidi) June 12, 2025 The draft resolution also finds that the IAEA's 'inability … to provide assurance that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful gives rise to questions that are within the competence of the United Nations Security Council, as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security'. The vote comes at a sensitive time as tensions in the region have been rising, with the US State Department announcing on Wednesday that it is drawing down the presence of people who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East. It also comes as the US and Iran have been holding talks on Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear programme. Oman's foreign minister said earlier on Thursday that a sixth round of negotiations will be held in his country on Sunday. The draft resolution makes a direct reference to the US-Iran talks, stressing its 'support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear programme, including the talks between the United States and Iran, leading to an agreement that addresses all international concerns related to Iran's nuclear activities, encouraging all parties to constructively engage in diplomacy'.
The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The two-state solution is a delusion
Next week, the United Nations is convening a high-level conference to discuss the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine. One might assume that, in the face of Israel's ongoing starvation and carnage in Gaza, states are gathering to mount a decisive, coordinated response to force Israel to cease fire and allow aid into the strip. They are not. Instead, the global community is assembling to revive the tired framework of the two-state solution, with some states perhaps opting for the mostly symbolic gesture of recognizing a Palestinian state. Co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, the convening parties reaffirm the idea that the two-state solution is 'the only viable path to just, lasting and comprehensive peace'. But France itself has reportedly backed away from its plan to recognize a Palestinian state even before the conference began. The two-state solution has become little more than a diplomatic theater, an incantation repeated with no intention, even according to its most passionate supporters. As Palestinians are undergoing a genocide in Gaza – a characterization now in near consensus among legal and genocide experts – the revival of the two-state language reads like a smokescreen. Last year, amid a crescendo in calls for the two-state solution, Israel approved the largest land theft in the West Bank in over three decades, further fragmenting the occupied territory and obliterating any meaningful prospect for a sovereign Palestinian state in it. The two-state solution has not only become detached from reality, but for too long steered the discussion away from reality itself. This is not an isolated development. Since the launch of the so-called peace process in the mid-1990s, Israeli settlements, always expanding and always with settler violence, have multiplied at breakneck speed, rather than the opposite. Just last month, Israel approved a plan for 22 new settlements in the West Bank. These decades of settlement expansion and de facto annexation have effectively gutted any viable basis for the two-state paradigm, even according to its own metrics. The truth is that the two-state solution has become a delusion – a mantra repeated to mask an entrenched one-state reality. From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, Israel controls the lives of all Palestinians, without equal rights, without equal representation, and with a system built to preserve Jewish supremacy. This system has long constituted apartheid, now affirmed as such by the international court of justice for violating prohibitions on racial segregation and the crime of apartheid. And yet the two-state delusion persists. This mantra continues to prop up the illusion that Israeli occupation is on the brink of ending – if only more states recognize the Palestinian state and if only Palestinians and Israelis would just sit down and talk. But three decades of so-called peace negotiations have yielded nothing but deeper entrenchment of Israeli occupation, systematic land theft and escalating subjugation of Palestinians. Despite this, most states – including the unelected Palestinian Authority – cling to the two-state delusion as if it were around the corner, and as if it could finally deliver justice and peace. It won't. It's time for the international community to confront the simple truth: the two-state solution is not just a fantasy – it has always been a misdiagnosis. If world leaders are serious about resolving the question of Palestine, they must abandon failed frameworks and confront root causes. That begins with the Nakba. Arabic for 'catastrophe', the Nakba refers to the process culminating in 1948, when Zionist militias displaced more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages to establish the state of Israel. But 77 years later, it's clear the Nakba was not just an event – it was the instantiation of a new structure. Put simply, the Nakba never came to an end. The 1948 Nakba inaugurated a regime that continues to destroy, fragment and reconfigure Palestinian life. It is a process premised on ongoing displacement and dispossession. But that is not all. Today, what may be called the Nakba regime not only sustains the world's longest refugee crisis since the second world war, but it also stratifies Palestinians into a legal caste system: citizens of Israel, residents of Jerusalem, West Bankers, Gazans and refugees – each subject to a different kind of violence, all designed to obstruct Palestinian self-determination. A reckoning with the Nakba is long overdue. It brings to the surface vital and unresolved legal, moral and historical questions: the status of lands conquered in 1948, the right of return for refugees, the inferior status of Palestinian citizens of Israel and the universal right of Palestinians to self-determination, regardless of where they live or what legal category they fall into. For decades, world governments have dodged these questions in favor of two-state delusions. But progress demands clarity, not just comfortable mantras. In protests, people often chant, 'No justice, no peace' – a reminder that these concepts are not synonymous. In Palestine, this slogan speaks to a deeper truth: with or without statehood, the Palestinian cause will endure if its origins are not addressed. Reckoning with the Nakba is a prerequisite for justice, let alone peace. Until states face this basic premise – and act on it – the reality on the ground will continue to defy any high-level diplomatic gathering. The two-state solution will remain what it has always been: a delusion. Rabea Eghbariah is a human rights lawyer and a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School
