Iran executed at least 834 people in 2023, a 43% increase compared to 2022 and the highest number since 2015, according to the annual report by the non-governmental organizations Iran Human Rights and Ensemble contre la peine de mort.

Executions in Iran, one of the countries where most executions of convicts are recorded along with China and Saudi Arabia, are carried out by hanging. In 2023, at least 22 women were executed in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the highest number in the last 10 years, NGOs say.

In 2015, Iranian authorities executed 972 people, Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), based in Norway, and Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM), based in Paris, recall.

In this 100-page report, the non-governmental organizations accuse Iran of resorting to the death penalty as a tool of political repression following the massive dissent movement in that country.

This movement was sparked by the death of Mahsha Amini in September 2022, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Iran, three days after she was arrested by the moral police for not respecting Iran’s strict dress code. Her family and human rights activists claim she was beaten to death, something Iranian authorities deny.

The protests, which have rocked the Islamic Republic’s regime for weeks, have waned in the face of a crackdown that has led to the deaths of hundreds of people according to rights groups, and thousands of arrests, according to the UN.

The report does not include in its statistics the 551 people, to say the least, who were killed during the protests or other extrajudicial executions inside or outside the prisons, the relevant press release underlined.

According to the report, at least 471 people (56% of all executions) were executed in 2023 for drug-related cases and at least 282 people (34% of all executions) were executed for murder.

Iran applies sharia (Islamic law) which provides for the death penalty for crimes such as drug trafficking, rape or murder. So far in 2024, at least 83 people have been executed in Iran, according to IHRNGO.

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