3 Women and Baluch Man Executed in Birjand; 8 Executions that Day

According to Haal Vsh, three women and a Baluch man were executed in Birjand Central Prison on 27 December. The Baluch man’s identity has been reported as Abdolghafour Gorgi (Barahouyi). He was sentenced to death for drug-related charges.

There is no information about the identities and charges against the three women.

Four other men were previously reported to have been executed at the prison that day: Esmail Ghader Magham, Ahmad Gorgij, Mohammad Hesari and Ebrahim Nehtani. They were all on death row for drug-related charges.

At the time of writing, none of their executions have been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

On 21 December, IHRNGO warned of more drug executions being carried out after an Iranian MP from Lorestan province stated that the cases of 1000-2000 drug death row inmates were at implementation stage.

The number of drug executions dramatically dropped in 2018 following a 2017 Amendment to the Anti-Narcotics Laws. Consequently, drug executions ranged between 24-30 per annum between 2018-2020. The Amendment was reversed in practice in 2021 when executions increased ten-fold to 126 in 2021 and doubled again in 2022 with 256 drug-related executions. On 13 September 2023, IHRNGO reported a 94% rise in the number of drug-related executions in the year following the start of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in September 2022.