DPRU RESEARCH PAPERS nationals, as well as ethnic or religious minorities, overwhelming majority of criminal and political leads to underreporting. Clearly, the true scale and cases, judges do not presume that defendants are scope of the problems faced by foreign nationals at innocent until proven guilty. The guiding principle risk of the death penalty in Iran cannot be fully seems to be the other way round.”11 Some measured, but, from the data we and others have offences, such as moharebeh, or ‘enmity against gathered, some trends appear. God’, Iran is a leading global executioner; second in specifically innocence. reject a presumption of 12 the world for summary executions, and until 2017 Haedi Ghaemi notes that “after the disputed legislative reform to the Anti-Narcotics law, was 2009 presidential election, the judiciary emerged 5 consistently the highest executioner per capita. as a key instrument to intimidate protestors and Iran has also failed to constrain its capital statute remove many leading activists and opinion makers, book to only the most serious offences. In 2021, steps that were both critical to the regime’s 50% of executions (182 individuals) were following survival.”13 This was once again evident in the convictions for murder charges under the principle immediate wake of protests in 2017, 2018 and of qisas, or retribution. The remaining 50% were for 2019 respectively. It continues today, as evidenced drug offences (36%), political offences and other by the 2021 Human Rights Watch report indicating 6 crimes such as sodomy and rape. Iran has also that the judiciary continued to weaponize “overly attracted international condemnation for executing broad articles of the penal code to prosecute juvenile offenders, with its threshold of criminal dissidents and minority ethnic groups.”14 responsibility, or bulugh, as low as 15 lunar years for boys (14 years seven months in solar years) and nine lunar years for girls (eight years, nine months in solar years).7 Foreign nationals have been known to be executed for crimes committed at even younger ages. Carolyn Further concerns surround impartiality and the separation of powers. For example, judicial appointments are assigned by the Guardian Council, half of whom are elected by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei. The Supreme Leader also directly appoints the Head of the Judiciary, a post held by Hoyle has argued “Iran’s Ebhrahim Raisi from March 2019 to July 2021. Revolutionary Courts appear not to follow any During Raisi’s judicial tenure, there was a spike in 8 recognisable due process.” that There have been political application of the death penalty, especially repeated accounts of torture in the interrogation as a tool to suppress dissidence and oppositional process, counsel, politics. Now President of the Islamic Republic of documented instances of forced confessions and Iran, there are serious concerns that instances of systemically inadequate procedural protections.9 mobilising the death penalty as a tool of political With political cases, pressure has been exerted by suppression will increase under his administration. the regime on families and prisoners to keep quiet This is especially due to Raisi’s central role in the withholding or face reprisals. 10 access to In terms of partisan sentencing executions of thousands of political prisoners in the and the presumption of innocence, the International 1980s, in addition to clamping down on mass- Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) has argued that protests in 2009, 2019 and 2021 respectively.15 “the judge plays the role of the interrogator, Evidently, the judiciary is a quintessentially political prosecutor and judge all at the same time … In the 2