The Child Left Between Rape and Revenge/Fereshteh Goli

Lost in the chaos of Iranian news, a story with catastrophic depth was the story of an old man raping a boy in Tabriz, which led to personal revenge by the boy’s family, who sent the old man to the hospital and into surgery; revenge whose instrument was a wooden sofa leg. In this note, […]...

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When a murderer becomes a hero/Reza Harisi

In the framework of modern ethics and legal systems based on collective rationality, “murder” is defined as the most fundamental assault on human life and the violation of all social conventions; whether the victim is a young woman who is the victim of an honor killing on suspicion of wrongdoing in emotional and sexual relationships, […]...

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Alienation from the institutional bloc of the system/Judicial trustee

Administrative corruption is usually defined as the abuse of power and authority for personal gain. In the case of the judiciary, clients who witness such corruption distrust law enforcement institutions (police and judiciary) and may, as a result, engage in personal vigilantism in response to attacks on their lives and property. Simply put, when people […]...

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Social Crises and the Role of Civil Society Institutions/Parsa Naseri

This article is dedicated to Hoda Saber, a concerned activist and researcher who dedicated her life to raising awareness and being actively involved in social and political arenas.   Not long ago, in a southern city of the country, after the execution of the murderer of a doctor in Yasuj, a phenomenon occurred that was […]...

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The erosion of law and the birth of street justice/Pardis Parsa

In the turbulent transition of the fifth decade after the 1979 revolution, Iran is facing a fundamental challenge in the field of public order and security that can be called the “erosion of the authority of the law.” The increasing statistics of street fights and personal conflicts in recent years only reveal the tip of […]...

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Penal System or System of Belief? / Sina Yousefi

Repentance (tawba) has long been regarded in Islamic jurisprudence as a moral and devotional concept, and over time, it has also gained a significant role in criminal proceedings. Islamic jurisprudence, by linking the realm of religious ethics with the domain of punishment, has created an institution in which inner transformation can lead to the annulment […]...

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A Look at the Role of Qisas in Murder Cases and the Distinction Between Justice and Revenge/ Sina Yousefi

In the legal system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, qisas (retaliatory justice) is not only prominently featured in Book Three of the Islamic Penal Code (2013), but its procedural structure and associated privileges are also legally codified. These include defining the scope of cases eligible for qisas, conditions for the equivalence of the weapon […]...

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Law or Verdict? A Criminal Law Critique of Public Executions/ Mohammad-Hadi Jafarpoor

According to the rule of law, the necessity of implementing and enforcing laws is essential to the life of a social system. Even thieves and murderers believe in the necessity of enforcing the law and respecting legal rulings, and it is precisely because of this awareness that they feel fear and anxiety when committing a […]...

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Tales from within the dark borders; a conversation with three prisoners sentenced to death / Amir Aghaei

When we talk about execution, we are not just talking about the “end of a life”, but about chains of poverty, injustice, and forgetfulness; we are talking about a path that slowly drags a “human” to a point of no return. In the depths of society, where the voices of the weakest are heard less, […]...

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Execution: Administering justice or reproducing violence? A conversation with Shahab Tajri / Azar Taherabadi

Execution has always been one of the most controversial and challenging topics in criminal justice systems around the world. In Iran, this punishment, especially in recent decades, has not only been a legal and religious issue, but also a political, social, and ethical one. In this regard, questions have been raised that go beyond the […]...

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Islamic Republic, record holder of capital punishment in the world / Morteza Hamounian

In the month of Khordad 1391 (June 2012), the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran said in a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the establishment of the ruling system in Iran: “We have set a record.” The reality is that he was right; even before that time, the Islamic Republic was one of the […]...

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Execution as a policy/ Ahmad Alavi

Based on the recent report by Amnesty International (published on April 8, 2025), (1) the Islamic Republic, with a minimum of 972 executions, accounts for more than 64% of all recorded executions in the world. This figure puts the regime ruling over Iran in the first place among the countries carrying out executions in the […]...

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