March 6, 2015We rarely hear a first-hand account of those languishing on death row in Iran. But a letter has just emerged from Hamed Ahmadi, a man executed on Wednesday 4 March after a grossly unfair trial. It gives a rare glimpse of the agony endured by those prisoners who know all is about to end.
“It is all finished”, the guard said, confirming the worst.
On the other side of the thick brick wall of Raja’i Shahr prison in Karaj, west of Teheran, are the bodies of six Sunni men from Iran’s Kurdish minority, each hanging from a noose.
Hamed Ahmadi, Jahangir Dehghani, Jamshid Dehghani, Kamal Molaee, Hadi Hosseini and Sediq Mohammadi had been sentenced to death in 2012 after being convicted of the vaguely worded offence of “enmity against God” (moharebeh).
Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentences in 2013 even though the men denied any involvement in armed or violent activities, saying they were targeted solely because they practiced or promoted their faith. The authorities refused to review their cases despite changes to the penal code that should have allowed them to do so."
Click here for entire letter and article from Amnesty International.
