Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran A/HRC/43/61 para 68(d) Full recommendation: The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government, the judiciary and the parliament: Pending its abolishment, remove the death penalty as punishment for all offences other than the most serious crimes, which involve intentional killing, and ensure that all individuals sentenced to death for offences other than intentional killing have their sentences commuted. Assessment using Impact Iran human rights indicators1 In its latest General Comment on Article 6, the Human Rights Committee explicitly stipulated that the term “the most serious crimes” must “be read restrictively and appertain only to crimes of extreme gravity, involving intentional killing. Crimes not resulting directly and intentionally in death […], although serious in nature, can never serve as the basis, within the framework of Article 6, for the imposition of the death penalty. In the same vein, a limited degree of involvement or of complicity in the commission of even the most serious crimes, […], cannot justify the imposition of the death penalty.”2 The death penalty continues to be applied in the Islamic Republic of Iran to a wide range of offences that do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes”, in other words, crimes that do not involve intentional killing,3 in contravention with Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. For example, the death penalty may be applied in some cases of adultery,4 for certain cases of consensual same-sex intercourse between men,5 drug related offences or repeated occurrences of drinking alcohol, or for vaguely defined offences such as moharebeh (“enmity against god”)6 and efsad-e fel-arz (“corruption on earth”).7 In November 2017 an amendment made to the law on drug trafficking entered into force, replacing the mandatory death penalty with a prison term of up to 30 years for non-violent drugrelated offences and increasing the quantity of drugs required for a death sentence to be imposed. However, mandatory death sentences for numerous drug-related offences remained and a number 1 CCPR.6.2.S.1; CCPR.6.2.P.1; CCPR.6.2.O.2 2 UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment no. 36, Article 6 (Right to Life), 3 September 2019, CCPR/C/GC/35, available at https://www.refworld.org/docid/5e5e75e04.html 3 UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment no. 36, Article 6 (Right to Life), 3 September 2019, CCPR/C/GC/35, available at https://www.refworld.org/docid/5e5e75e04.html 4 Islamic Penal Code (2013) articles 136 and 225 5 Islamic Penal Code (2013) article 235 6 Islamic Penal Code (2013) article 279 7 Islamic Penal Code (2013) article 286 1

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