Iran has hanged a woman and four men for murder in the capital's Evin prison, the government daily Iran reported on Thursday.
Wednesday's hangings bring to at least 180 the number of executions in Iran this year, according to an AFP count.According to Amnesty International, Iran applied the death penalty more than any other country apart from China last year, executing 317 people.Capital offences in the Islamic republic include murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery.
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IRI's human rights record is its Achille's heel. This is its most inexcusable fault, not its rhetoric and not its nuclear ambitions. Western countries are not serious about tackling this issue with Iran. There are many reasons for this, one of which is that there is no "business" in human rights, whereas there is money in the escalating fear of a potential war in the Middle East, translated into large-scale purchases of arms and military equipment.
When it's all said and done, history will not judge the world favorably for keeping quiet during an era where human rights were systematically and routinely violated in Iran. Whereas no one is keeping count of all those murdered, tortured, stoned, and executed in Iran, history will find a way of telling those numbers, asking each of those countries where they were when in the dawn of the 21st century so many people died in the hands of IRI.
