Iran
Foreign Nationals and the Death Penalty
Death Penalty Overview
Iran is a leading global executioner; second in the
world for summary executions, and until 2017
legislative reform to the Anti-Narcotics law, was
consistently the highest executioner per capita.
Iran has also failed to constrain its capital statute
book to only the most serious offences. In 2021,
50% of executions (182 people) were following
convictions for murder charges under the principle
of qisas, or retribution.
The remaining 50% were for drug offences (36%),
political offences and other crimes such as sodomy
and rape. Iran has also attracted international
condemnation for executing juvenile offenders,
with its threshold of criminal responsibility as low
as 14 for boys and eight for girls. Foreign nationals
have been known to be executed for crimes
committed at even younger ages.
fi
fi
fi
Adultery and same-sex sexual relations are death
eligible offences, with the former potentially
punishable by stoning. Capital offences are
frequently leveraged against ethnic minorities and
foreign nationals as a state response to drugtraf ckers, political opponents, those accused of
spying, members of opposition groups and
minority activists in civil society.
Until 2017, the majority of executions in the
Islamic Republic of Iran were for drug-related
offences. The reform to the Anti-Narcotics law
rowed back on the 1997 and 2011 revisions,
which successively lowered the death-eligible
minimum-thresholds for drug traf cking. Since
then, although the numbers of those executed
for drug offences reduced in 2018-2020, in
2021 the number of people executed for drug
offences rose again sharply.
In 2021, at least 131 people (36%) were
executed for drug offences, compared with 30
or fewer drug-related executions in each of the
years from 2018-2020. Foreign nationals
(particularly Afghans and Baluchi Pakistanis)
disproportionately face the death penalty for
these crimes, partly due to their involvement in
the drug trade routes.
2021 also saw former Head of Judiciary
Ebrahim Raisi elected as President. Raisi's
judicial tenure was de ned by a spike in the
death penalty to suppress dissidence. He
played a central role in the executions of
thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s, in
addition to clamping down on mass protests in
2009, 2019 and 2021. Now President of the
Islamic Republic of Iran, there are serious
concerns that instances of mobilising the death
penalty as a tool of political suppression will
increase under his administration.