2 Men Executed for Drug Charges in Rasht/80 Others Awaiting Gallows

According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, two men were executed in Rasht Central Prison on 18 January. Their identities have been established as 36-year-old Eslahollah Bakhsh (pictured left), an Afghan national, and Hamid Ebadinejad (pictured right) from Rasht who were sentenced to death for drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court in different cases.

An informed source told IHRNGO: “Eslahollah was arrested for drug charges two years ago and sentenced to death. Hamid Ebadinejad was arrested for drug charges around five years ago. He was from a Rasht village and was accused of making methamphetamine in a kitchen.”

“There are currently around 80 prisoners on death row for drug-related charges in Rasht Central Prison who are scheduled to be executed in the next 2-3 weeks,” the source added.

Eslahollah is the third Afghan national to be executed in 2024.

Two other men were reportedly executed at the prison that day which IHRNGO has not been able to independently verify.

At the time of writing, neither of their executions have been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

Drug-related executions have continuously risen every year for the past three years. At least 305 people were executed for drug-related charges between 1 January-10 October 2023, a 69% increase compared to the same period in 2022, and the number of drug-related executions in 2023 were close to 20 times higher than 2020.

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.