Former UN prosecutor: Iran’s latest wave of public executions amounts to murder

The latest wave of public executions of protesters in Iran amount to murder and massacres, crimes against humanity, former UN prosecutor Professor Payam Akhavan said in an interview with Eye for Iran.

His comments came days after two protesters were publicly executed by hanging in Isfahan, sparking a new wave of international condemnation and a rare show of public disobedience. Hundreds of Iranians gathered near the execution site, the crowd whistled and chanted “shame on you!”, directing their outrage at the police. Security forces later dispersed the protesters, and witnesses said tear gas, stun guns and warning shots were fired.

An online campaign against the death penalty was shared hundreds of thousands of times in a single day. At Gezel Khesar prison outside Tehran, some 1,500 death row inmates were also on hunger strike as part of the No Executions campaign.

Akhavan argued that the executions could not be separated from the massacre of protesters during a nationwide uprising in January.

“In Iran, we are dealing with arbitrary executions. These are murders. These are massacres,” Akhavan said. “And given the scale of these killings, one could argue that this is the extermination of the population.”