Professor Payam Akhavan, an Iranian-Canadian lawyer, human rights activist, and professor at McGill University in Montreal. Mr. Akhavan, who has been actively pursuing cases of human rights violations around the world for two decades, including as a former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has made significant efforts to […]...

Conversation with Faranaz Kamali On the eve of the Persian New Year, angry men in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, killed a woman named Farokhondeh with their fists, sticks, and stones, under the assumption that she had burned a copy of the Quran. They then set her body on fire. The immediate release of photos […]...

Hope and despair, together, are intertwined in Karaj’s Qezel Hessar prison – one of the largest prisons in the Middle East – despite thousands of prisoners under death sentences. It has been a few months since prisoners have heard whispers that the current laws regarding issuing death sentences for drug-related crimes may change; on one […]...

Prior to 1390 (2011), possession, buying, and selling of certain drugs such as hashish and industrial drugs did not carry the death penalty. However, the Expediency Discernment Council declared in a resolution that anyone carrying, buying, selling, or possessing more than 30 grams of these types of drugs would face the death penalty. This resolution […]...

Dr. Mahmoud Amiri Moghadam, born in 1350 in Kerman, is a professor at the School of Medicine in Oslo, Norway. His doctoral thesis in the field of neurology is recognized as the best research in the field of medicine, and for this reason, he has received an award from the King of Norway. Dr. Amiri […]...

Introduction – General Overview We know that in Islamic punishments and criminal laws, punishments are divided into two categories: hadd and ta’zir. Hadd punishments are laws that are clearly stated in the Quran and authentic prophetic traditions, and are known as “textual punishments”. Ta’zir punishments are punishments that are not explicitly mentioned in the Sharia […]...

The Iranian government has always been questioned in international forums due to the high number of executions carried out within the country. The response from Iranian officials has always been that religious laws prevent the reconsideration of the death penalty in criminal laws. However, this response has never been convincing for questioners and critics, as […]...

The image of a child looking down at the camera, with a crooked face and a bitter smile, accompanied by a text that tells the story of the child’s innocence and the pity of their circumstances, has become an inseparable part of civil and political activities that protest against the situation of a prisoner or […]...

“From ancient times, in various schools of criminal law, the discussion of methods of punishment has been controversial. How should we punish a criminal who disrupts social order and stability? And what should be the result of this punishment?” The late Dr. Naser Katouzian, the undisputed master of Iranian law, in the later years of […]...

The death penalty, which involves taking away a person’s life, is an irreversible punishment. This irreversibility of the punishment, in situations where there is always a possibility of a mistake in judgment, turns it into the worst form of punishment. However, this is not the whole story. Neither the arguments of opponents of this execution […]...

If you get arrested, the judicial system of no country will easily overlook your mistake. Even if you are detained as a citizen of another country, you will not easily be deported to your home country. The threat of long-term imprisonment and even harsher punishments will always loom over you; we are talking about smuggling […]...

“Sab” in the dictionary means cursing. (Dehkhoda Dictionary) However, in other dictionaries, “sab” is also mentioned as meaning condemnation and damnation. (Moein Dictionary) Cursing the Prophet (Islam’s messenger), cursing the infallible Imams (twelve pure Imams), and cursing the infallibles (the Prophet, the twelve Imams, and Fatima Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet) as well as […]...