Tehran: Iran executed three women in a single day, an NGO said on Friday.
What was their crime?
According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), the three women were executed in different prisons – all for murdering their husbands in separate cases.
There has been a growing concern over the rising number of women being hanged in Iran, AFP reported. At least 10 women have been executed by the government this year so far.
Many of the women finished off husbands who were abusive or they married as child brides or relatives, according to activists.
IHR said Afghan national Senobar Jalali was executed in a prison outside Tehran.
Soheila Abedi, who had been married at the age of 15, was hanged in a prison in the western Iranian city of Sanandaj. She murdered her husband 10 years after their marriage and was convicted in 2015.
The third woman — Faranak Beheshti, convicted five years ago for the murder of her husband — was executed in a prison in northwestern city of Urmia, IHR informed.
Activists are of the view that Iran’s laws are stacked against women, who don’t have the right to unilaterally demand a divorce, even in cases of domestic violence and abuse.
An IHR report published last October said that at least 164 women were executed between 2010 and October 2021.
This year, there has been an alarming surge in executions in Iran.
Over 300 people have been executed so far in Iran in 2022, according to IHR.
Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran and London-based Amnesty International said Wednesday that Iran is carrying out executions at a “horrifying pace” in an “abhorrent assault” on the right to life.
Among those who have been arrested in recent weeks include director Mohammad Rasoulof, whose film ‘There is No Evil’ about the effects of use of death penalty in Iran won the Golden Bear at 2020 2020 Berlin Film Festival.
The authorities have been cracking down against critical voices.
