HRANA – On the anniversary of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, The Department of Statistics and Publications of the Human Rights Activists in Iran publishes an annual report on executions in Iran. This report is intended to provide visibility to the dire situation where thousands of people are awaiting execution. The present report concerns the individuals executed in the one year period from 10 October 2015 until the beginning of October 2016 and refers to at least 504 people executed in different parts of Iran by hanging. The report shows a decrease by about 38% in the number of executions compared to the same period last year. Most of these individuals had been condemned to death in unfair courts and deprived of access to lawyers. Moreover, this report shall not be considered an accurate and comprehensive estimate since the Iranian government has placed enormous restrictions on human rights related activities and independent human right organizations.

Since October 10^th, 2015 to the beginning of October, 2016, this organization published 298 reports regarding the executions in Iran. These reports include a total of 588-execution decrees out of which 504 individuals have been already executed. Out of the 504 executions, a total of 39 people were executed in public. Among the victims whose identity has been established, there were 9 women, and the age of 4 individuals was under 18 years at the time they committed the alleged crimes.

In comparison with the number of executions in the same period last year, there has been a 38% decrease in the number of executions but also a 12% increase in the number of execution decrees. The number of public executions has fallen by 30% over the same period, and execution of women has also shown a 19% decline.

According to this report, 57% of the executions were related to the charges of drug trafficking, 26% for murder, 6% for rape, 7% for political charges, and 4% for miscellaneous cases.

The following pie chart illustrates the number of executions in different provinces of Iran. This graph shows that the province of Alborz with three most populated prisons and 29% executions comes in the 1^st place, and provinces of West Azerbaijan and Hormozgan with 10% and 8% are in the 2^nd and 3^rd places, respectively.

According to this report, the number of public executions has been 8% of the total number of executions as shown in the following figure.

The following graph shows the number of executions reported by independent human rights organizations, which is estimated to be 61% of the executions carried out covertly.