Execution of three prisoners in Zahedan
5-January-2021
Category: executions
Breathing in Confinement, January5, 2021: At dawn on Sunday, January 3, 2021, three prisoners were executed in Zahedan Prison. Two of them were executed while a day before their execution, their request for retrial had been registered.
According to ISNA news agency, on the morning of Sunday, January 3, 2021, three prisoners were executed in Zahedan Central Prison. ISNA identified the executed prisoners as Hassan Dehvari, Elias Qalandarzehi and Omid Mahmoudzehi.
Hassan Dehvari, 28, son of Abdullah, father of five and Elias Qalandarzehi, 21, the only child of his parents and father of one daughter, were both from Saravan.
In a letter they managed to send out, the two Baloch prisoners had revealed that for seven months before being transferred to prison, they had been tortured and meanwhile they had twice been taken to Branch 6 of Security Court presided over by Judge Shah Mohammadi.
Hassan Dehvari had written: “In the intelligence detention center we were under severe physical and mental tortures such as the threat of rape, being tied to a ‘miracle bed’ (a special table used for flogging), pulling out fingernails and toenails as well as other severe tortures using all kinds of tools such as whips, cable wires, special helmets for electric shocks to the head, and turning on a drill and threatening to pierce our arms and legs with it.” He continued: “They brought female members of my family in the prison and said that if refused to accept my accusations, they would rape them in front of my eyes under video cameras.”
The execution of two Sunni prisoners took place while Mohammad Reza Faghihi, Elias Qalandzehi and Hassan Dehvari’s lawyer, in an interview with Emtedad, announced that his clients had applied for a retrial and expressed hope that their execution be postponed at least until the end of the retrial.
The day before the execution, Breathing in Confinement reported that the two Baloch prisoners had been transferred to solitary confinement to serve their death sentences.
The Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran, condemning the recent executions, warned against the hasty executions in various prisons in Iran and called on all human rights organizations, the United Nations and UN human rights reporters to take decisive action against the authorities of the Islamic Republic to stop the executions in Iran.