Entries by Nina Motazedi

A new report pub­lished by Ius Stella, a non-prof­it in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), high­lights ongo­ing human rights vio­la­tions in the nation’s efforts to elim­i­nate urban gangs, which has been marked by arbi­trary arrest and the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences, includ­ing on vul­ner­a­ble civil­ian youth pop­u­la­tions, after mil­i­tary tri­als whose fair­ness is in grave doubt. Earlier in January, reports emerged that 170 death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers, ages 18 to 35, con­vict­ed for their links to…

For the third con­sec­u­tive ses­sion, the Georgia House of Representatives is review­ing a bill seek­ing to pro­vide bet­ter pro­tec­tions to cap­i­tal defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. Currently, the state requires a defen­dant to prove​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” that they have an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty – the only death penal­ty state to have this unusu­al­ly high stan­dard. Introduced by a bipar­ti­san group of leg­is­la­tors on January 27, 2025, HB 123 would…

On January 16, 2025, Taiwan car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion since April 2020. Huang Linkai, who was sen­tenced to death in 2017 for the 2013 mur­ders of his ex-girl­friend and her moth­er, was exe­cut­ed at the Taipei Detention Center. Although Mr. Huang’s attor­ney filed a last-minute appeal, the execution…

Progress towards glob­al abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty con­tin­ues with Zimbabwe’s end-2024 deci­sion to near­ly elim­i­nate the prac­tice, only pre­serv­ing the right to impose death when the coun­try is under a declared pub­lic emer­gency. Zimbabwe’s last execution…

According to num­bers report­ed by Agence France-Presse, Saudi Arabia exe­cut­ed 303 peo­ple in 2024 — the nation’s high­est ever total, and cur­rent­ly the sec­ond high­est known exe­cu­tion total world­wide for this year. November alone saw the exe­cu­tion of more than 100 for­eign nation­als, near­ly triple the num­ber in each of the past two years. UN human rights experts expressed con­cern fol­low­ing the December 3 exe­cu­tion of three Egyptian nation­als, call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to halt the pending…

According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), October saw the high­est month­ly exe­cu­tion total in Iran since 2007, when the orga­ni­za­tion began doc­u­ment­ing exe­cu­tions. There were at least 166 exe­cu­tions last month, bring­ing the year­ly total to 651 exe­cu­tions over the past 10 months. Of the October exe­cu­tions iden­ti­fied by IHRNGO, only 12%, or 20 exe­cu­tions, were report­ed by offi­cial sources. Eleven Baluch and nine Kurdish peo­ple were among those executed.

On September 13, 2024, 37 peo­ple, includ­ing three Americans, who were​“charged with ter­ror­ism, mur­der, crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tion and ille­gal pos­ses­sion of weapons, among oth­er charges” for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in an attempt­ed coup in May were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by a mil­i­tary court. Richard Bondo, lawyer for the three Americans, filed an appeal on Tuesday, September 17, 2024. Mr. Bondo argues that since the DRC is a mem­ber of the Treaty of Rome, the…

The Aprajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, which out­lines the death penal­ty for rape result­ing in the victim’s death or​“veg­e­ta­tive state,” was adopt­ed by the West Bengal gov­ern­ment in east­ern India on September 3, 2024. Under inter­na­tion­al law, it is unlaw­ful to pre­scribe the death penal­ty for a crime not meet­ing the​“most seri­ous” crime (e.g., inten­tion­al…

Amidst a con­tin­ued post-elec­­­tion exe­cu­tion surge and increased sup­pres­sion of peace­ful prison protests, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and 67 human rights orga­ni­za­tions across four con­ti­nents expressed their sup­port for the ongo­ing​“No Death Penalty Tuesdays” week­ly hunger strike move­ment cur­rent­ly span­ning 17 Iranian pris­ons across the coun­try. The August 27, 2024 state­ment, pub­lished a day after the first pub­lic hang­ing of the year,​“call[ed] for an…

30-year-old German nation­al Rico Krieger, who was sen­tenced to death on six charges relat­ed to ter­ror­ism, espi­onage, and mer­ce­nary activ­i­ty, was par­doned by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on July 30, 2024, there­by con­vert­ing his death sen­tence to a life prison term. On August 1, Mr. Krieger was sub­se­quent­ly released dur­ing the largest pris­on­er exchange since the Cold War, accord­ing to The Guardian. Eight Russian pris­on­ers were released from Western…