NCRI, 2 Jan 2013 – Ms. Farideh Karimi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran Foreign Affairs Commission said in a television interview the Iranian regime is escalating executions as the world moves to abolish the death penalty.
“According to the regime’s official media, 26 prisoners were executed from December 3 to the 25th, 23 of which were carried out in in public,” Karimi said in an interview with satellite TV Simaye Azadi (IranNTV.com).
“As stated many times by the regime, mass executions are carried out with the purpose of intimidation and repression the population,” she added.
“The timing of executions carried out is in the exact opposite of the the direction of global consensus on executions. On December 20th, the UN General Assembly in New York adopted a resolution calling for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. This resolution, put to vote every two years, was adopted this year with an unprecedented 111 positive votes.
“This number of votes is a clear signal that contrary to the claims of the clerical regime that it is only the Western countries who support a moratorium on executions, this is actually a worldwide movement.
“It should be noted that out of 193 countries in the world, about 150 have formally abolished the death penalty in practice.
“Iran under the clerical regime has the highest number of executions per capita, or in other words ranks first in the world in executions.”