The UN Human Rights Office has called for the immediate release of thousands of individuals being held in Iran for their involvement in peaceful demonstrations.
On 8 November, the prosecutor said more than 1,000 indictments had been issued against those arrested concerning protests in Tehran province alone. Hundreds of other indictments have been issued in the rest of the country.
“We urge the authorities to immediately release all those detained in connection to peaceful protests and to drop the charges against them,” Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement issued in Geneva on Tuesday.
“Human rights law protects the rights of people to peaceful assembly and to freedom of expression.”
Instead of opening space for dialogue on legitimate grievances, the authorities are responding to unprecedented protests with increasing harshness, Laurence added.
On Sunday, an Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran found an unnamed protester guilty of moharebeh or “waging war against God” and efsad-e fel-arz or “corruption on earth”, for allegedly damaging public property and sentenced the person to death.
At least nine other protesters have been charged with offences that carry the death penalty.
Under international law, countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it for the “most serious crimes”, which are interpreted as crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing.
Crimes not resulting directly and intentionally in death can never serve as the basis for the imposition of the death penalty.
“We, therefore, call on the Iranian authorities to immediately impose a moratorium on the death penalty, to refrain from charging capital crimes, and to revoke death sentences issued for crimes not qualifying as the most serious crimes,” he concluded.
