More than 5,000 people on death row in Iran could be offered a reprieve following a softening of the country’s drug laws, which are among the harshest in the world.
The change will apply retrospectively, “meaning some 5,000 prisoners could escape execution,” says the BBC.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It follows a vote by Iran’s parliament last August to raise the threshold on the quantity of drugs that will be considered a capital offence. Of the hundreds of people executed by the state each year, the vast majority have been found guilty of drug offences.
“A young population and an abundance of cheap, addictive substances, many coming over the border from Afghanistan, pose a twin challenge to Iranian authorities,” says The Guardian, which claims almost three million Iranians are addicted to hard drugs, out of a population of 80 million.
Speaking to the BBC, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights, an independent charity based in Norway, said: “If implemented properly, this change in law will represent one of the most significant steps towards reduction in the use of the death penalty worldwide.”
But he also expressed concern that those on death row might not be able to take advantage.
“Since most of those sentenced to death for drug offences belong to the most marginalised parts of Iranian society, it is not given that they have the knowledge and resources to apply for commuting their sentence,” Amiry-Moghaddam said.
His organisation estimates that Iran has executed around 10,000 people for drug crimes over the past three decades.
-
Syria’s Kurds: abandoned by their US allyTalking Point Ahmed al-Sharaa’s lightning offensive against Syrian Kurdistan belies his promise to respect the country’s ethnic minorities
-
The ‘mad king’: has Trump finally lost it?Talking Point Rambling speeches, wind turbine obsession, and an ‘unhinged’ letter to Norway’s prime minister have caused concern whether the rest of his term is ‘sustainable’
-
5 highly hypocritical cartoons about the Second AmendmentCartoons Artists take on Kyle Rittenhouse, the blame game, and more
-
Israel retrieves final hostage’s body from GazaSpeed Read The 24-year-old police officer was killed during the initial Hamas attack
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Iran unleashes carnage on its own peopleFeature Demonstrations began in late December as an economic protest
-
How oil tankers have been weaponisedThe Explainer The seizure of a Russian tanker in the Atlantic last week has drawn attention to the country’s clandestine shipping network
-
Iran in flames: will the regime be toppled?
In Depth The moral case for removing the ayatollahs is clear, but what a post-regime Iran would look like is anything but
-
Why Greenland’s natural resources are nearly impossible to mineThe Explainer The country’s natural landscape makes the task extremely difficult
-
Trump, Iran trade threats as protest deaths riseSpeed Read The death toll in Iran has surpassed 500
