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Iranwire – The Islamic Republic has carried out the executions of four prisoners amid a significant rise in death penalties.
The prisoners, who had been previously sentenced to death on drug-related charges, were hanged without a final meeting with their families, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Two of the executed individuals were from Mashhad, one from Quchan, and the fourth was an Afghan national.
Sources identified the two prisoners as Yaser Ghafoorian and Mohammad Hooshyar Alizadeh, 47.
They were arrested in 2019 on drug-related charges.
No official sources or domestic media within Iran covered these executions.
According to a report by Amnesty International, Iran has reached its highest level of death sentence executions in the last eight years, with the judiciary executing 853 people in 2023 alone.
The report indicates that 481 executions, more than half of the total, were related to drug crimes.
This marks an 89 percent rise in death penalties for drug-related offenses compared to 2022 when 255 people were executed.
The latest numbers also show a 264 percent increase compared to 2021, when 132 individuals faced execution on similar charges.
