rferl.org – An Iranian prisoner has had four of his fingers amputated after being accused of stealing five sheep from a farm owned by a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a charge the man denies.
The Iran Human Rights organization said the sentence to cut off four fingers from the hand of a 34-year-old prisoner, identified only as Yousef T., was carried out last summer in the central prison of Qom, central Iran. It was not previously reported.
According to an informed source cited by the organization, Yousef T.
insisted on his innocence throughout the 13 months he was detained in
prison before the sentence was carried out. The man was a builder
working at the farm when he was accused.
“Amputating a man’s fingers for the alleged theft of a few sheep by a
corrupt regime whose officials compete in billion-dollar thefts and
embezzlement, demonstrates the utmost cruelty and immorality of this
system,”
said Mahmud Amiri Moghadam, the director of the Iran Human Rights organization.
Mahmud Amiri Moghadam, the organization’s director, added: “[Supreme
Ruler Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, the officials, and the judges of the
judiciary, as well as the executors of these medieval sentences, must be
held accountable for such crimes.”
Under Islamic law enforced in Iran, repeat offenders face amputation of
their fingers for theft. Despite widespread criticism, the sentence of
amputation for theft continues to be carried out regularly in Iranian
prisons.
Diana Eltahawy, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at
Amnesty International, has described the punishment as “a horrifying
display of the Iranian authorities’ assault on human rights and human
dignity.”
The D.C.-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran
(ABC) says it has collected reports on at least 356 sentences of
amputation issued since the 1979 revolution, adding that the real number
is believed to be many times higher.