Iranian authorities executed three Turkish nationals for drug trafficking last year only 11 days after a high-profile visit to Tehran by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it has emerged.
Iran – which executed nearly 1,000 people last year, more than any other country apart from China – usually refrains from sending foreign nationals to the gallows, especially in cases involving countries with which Tehran has maintained friendly relations.
The family of a 46-year-old man, Faruk Güner, a father of nine children, confirmed to the Guardian that he was executed. He was a lorry driver working between Afghanistan and Turkey who passed through Iran. “We tried for four years to save him. They didn’t tell us that he was going to be executed. They hanged him in the morning; we got the news in the afternoon,” Güner’s brother said.
The information about the executions was first received by the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), which closely monitors Iran’s use of capital punishment. The group said two other Turkish nationals, identified as Mehmet Yilmaz and Matin, whose surname is not known, were executed at the same time. Activists say drug related crimes do not usually receive a fair trial in Iran.
Most executions in Iran are for drug offences.
The three Turks were executed in April 2015, a little more than a week after Erdoğan met with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran.
The countries, which have maintained good ties for several decades, have been at odds over regional issues in recent years and relations were frosty at the time of Erdoğan’s visit.
IHR said the convicts were executed at Vakilabad prison in the eastern city of Mashhad after being arrested separately. “These three prisoners were reportedly not granted their last prison visit with family members before they were executed,” it said. “Additionally, close sources say that the Iranian authorities did not inform their families of the executions” until late April but “their bodies were reportedly returned to Turkey” in May.
Güner’s brother said his family’s pleas to Iranian as well as Turkish authorities fell on deaf ears. “We asked help from many places; nobody helped us,” he told the Guardian via telephone. “We found a lawyer and we went to Iran; we tried to prove that he was innocent, but one day they just executed him. This is inhuman. He had nine kids.”
“They think that they are Muslim, but they are not. If my brother were in Israel, even in Israel, he would be alive,” Güner’s brother said. We couldn’t even see him for the last time,” the brother said. “There are no laws in Iran. If he were in another country, at least we would be able to see my brother for the last time. They just executed him without telling us. Everything happened suddenly.”
Michael, Mehmet Yilmaz’s son, told the IHR: “I travelled to Iran seven times in order to deliver my dad’s medication to him. The Iranian authorities confiscated my dad’s truck, which was worth 80,000 Turkish lira (£21,000). My family is currently still paying off the truck through monthly instalments.”
Source: Guardian, 28 Oct. 2016
