UN says Iran carrying out executions at 'alarming rate'

Iran is carrying out executions at “an alarming rate,” the United Nations chief said in a Wednesday report.

In the first seven months of the year, the country executed at least 419 people, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the U.N. General Assembly, according to The Associated Press. This is an increase of 30 percent from the same period in 2022.

Guterres said seven men were killed in relation to or for participating in nationwide protests sparked by the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini — who was killed for violating Iran’s Islamic dress code with a loose headscarf.

He said the U.N. human rights office found that the executions of the men “consistently indicated that the judicial proceedings did not fulfill the requirements for due process and a fair trial under international human rights law."

Guterres said the men were denied access to adequate and timely legal representation and were forced into confessing, which “may have been obtained as a result of torture," the AP reported.

According to the U.N., more than half of the people killed were executed for drug-related offenses. In the address, Guterres expressed concern about the lack of investigations into Iran’s “reported human rights violations.”

An estimated 20,000 individuals were arrested for participating in the nationwide protests in the last year, many of them children, the U.N. chief said.

According to the Iranian government, a “minimum of” 22,000 people arrested during the protests were pardoned, but Guterres said it was difficult to verify those numbers. Many female activists, journalists and members of minority groups may have already been pardoned but rearrested, he added.

The secretary-general expressed concern about excessive use of force against protestors and beatings and psychological and sexual abuse once they were put in detention.

He urged Iran to halt all executions and release all people detained arbitrarily.

The Associated Press contributed.