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| Onlookers at a public hanging, Tehran, January 5, 2011 Source: Iran-Resist |
"The radical Islamic government of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reportedly executing prisoners at an alarming rate, according to International Campaign for Human Rights. Iran is suspected of executing one person every eight hours. Since the beginning of 2011, Iran has executed 87 people on various charges." [According to this blog's own sources, at least 92 prisoners were executed in January 2011 alone. See here]
While the international news media and government officials are preoccupied with events occurring in Egypt, the Iranian government's execution of a Dutch-Iranian woman government officials claimed was involved in drug smuggling has created a firestorm in Amsterdam, Holland over the weekend.
Those who knew Miss Bahrami, 46, claim the drug charges were bogus, and police officials in The Netherlands say that she was originally arrested for participating in anti-government protests two years ago when civil unrest in Iran followed accusations of a corrupt presidential election.
After being arrested and processed on charges of sedition, the Iranian government allegedly changed the records to show Bahrami was arrested for cocaine smuggling and possession, a capital offense in that Islamist nation.
Uri Rosenthal, Holland's foreign minister, blasted government officials in Tehran for not granting the executed woman's relatives entry into Iran to bury Bahrami. Instead of turning over her remains to her relatives, the Iranian officials secretly took Bahrami's body more than 200 miles outside of the Iranian capital and held her last rites and burial ceremony without her relatives in attendance.
"This is a shocking fact which bears upon the regime which does not meet the normal standards of civilized behavior towards citizens and foreigners," Rosenthal said.
Bahrami, a naturalized Dutch citizen, was hanged on January 29 after being convicted of the drug offense. Iranian prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi alleges that an unspecified amount of cocaine was found in a search of her temporary residence during the country's national elections in 2009.
Her execution nine says ago prompted the Dutch government to freeze all contact with what it labeled a "barbarous regime."
Meanwhile, 2 American citizens who claim they accidentally wandered into Iran last year are still being held in Iran . While the government released their female companion, Sarah Shourd, 31, her boyfriend Shane Bauer, 27, and a friend, Josh Fattal, 27, remain captives accused of being foreign spies.
The radical Islamic government of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reportedly executing men and women at a shockingly high rate, according to officials with the International Campaign for Human Rights. The ICHR claims Iran executes at least three prisoners every 24 hours.
Many of those given the death penalty are political prisoners who oppose the rule of Islamic clerics in Iran.
According to Aaron Rhodes of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, "The Iranian Judiciary is on an execution binge orchestrated by the intelligence and security agencies."
Iranian judges are widely believed to lack independence and their decisions are frequently subordinated to the wishes of security agencies. Also, the actual number of prisoners executed in Iran is difficult to verify but many believe is higher than is reported.
Iranian prisons are often the scenes of mass execution such as in January when more than a hundred people were executed in a mass hanging in just one Iranian prison, according to International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The high rate of executions in Iran has prompted the United Nations order Iran to halt its execution of prisoners, but Iran continues its hardline approach to criminal justice and law enforcement.
Even Iranians with dual citizenships or permanent residency abroad have been arrested, sentenced to death by Iranian courts, and then summarily executed.
In a case that outraged the world's journalists in 2003, an Iranian-Canadian journalist taken into custody by the secret police was later murdered by Iranian security agents while in a Tehran prison, according to Canadian police officials. The reporter, Zahra Kazemi, was brutally tortured and sexually assaulted by her interrogators.
Source: Jim Kouri, CPP, formerly 5th Vice-President, is currently a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police; The Examiner, February 13, 2011
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