Iran executed over 250 people, including at least four child offenders, in 2020 and so far this year has carried out 230 executions that included nine women and one child who was executed in secret, the U.N. independent investigator on human rights in Iran said Monday.
Javaid Rehman told the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee that Iran continues to implement the death penalty "at an alarming rate" and said "the absence of official statistics and lack of transparency around executions means that this practice escapes scrutiny resulting in serious abuses preventing accountability."
According to Amnesty International, Iran was the top executioner in the Middle East last year, accounting for more than half the region's 493 executions, followed by Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Amnesty's annual figures exclude China, where executions believed to number in the thousands are classified as a state secret, and omit executions from some countries marred by conflict like Syria.