ABC blog

The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF) has collected reports of a total of 4092 judicial executions between 2002 and 2012. Of these, 3180 were obtained from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s semi-official and governmental news sources and/or websites of provincial capitals’ judiciary centers and 912 were based on reports of civil society groups inside and outside Iran. In the absence of independent field investigation and considering the serious and increasing restrictions on free speech in Iran, the data presented below cannot be exhaustive. It is rather meant to indicate a trend and to draw the international community’s attention to the frequent and arbitrary application of the death penalty.

The official information on executions lacks details and Iran’s judiciary does not provide access to court records.  Therefore, in most instances, it has not been possible to obtain further details about the identities of the accused or criminal charges brought against those executed nor the evidence presented against them.  The tables and figures below provide further details of executions.

Drug-related charges, sometimes in conjunction with other charges, are reported in the majority of execution cases.  The table below includes individuals convicted of any drug-related charges, such as possession, sale, smuggling, and trafficking of drugs:

 Meanwhile, possession or transportation of drugs alone, even in relatively small amounts, is a frequent cause of execution:

 The following pages present information relating to judicial executions, including: the charges on which victims were convicted and executed; the distribution of executions by location, age, and gender of the victim; and the geographical distribution of all judicial executions, as well as the subset of judicial executions carried out in public.

Executions in 2002-2012 by charge

* Among the 54 individuals executed, 40 were members of ethnic groups (35 Kurds, 4 Arabs, and 1 Baluchi). 5 individuals were charged with apostasy, 1 for claiming to be a prophet, and 2 for their association with religious groups. 6 convicts, members of Salafi groups, were also convicted of an alleged assassination and 5 others were charged with alleged assassinations of members of the security forces.

** 203 convicts were executed for alleged rape and 41 for alleged homosexual rape.

 Executions in 2002-2012 by province

Public executions in 2002-2012 by province