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Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
There were reports ofexecutions after unfair trials. Exiles and human rights monitors alleged that many of those supposedly executed for criminal offenses, such as narcotics trafficking, were political dissidents.
The law criminalized dissent and applied the death penalty to offenses such as apostasy, "attempts against the security of the State, outrage against high-ranking officials, and insults against the memory of Imam Khomeini and against the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic."
On January 24, according to domestic press reports, two bombs exploded in the city of Ahvaz, in the ethnic Arab majority province of Khuzestan, with as many as nine dead and 40 wounded. On January 28 and February 28, there were further bombings but no casualties reported. The violence came amid social unrest that began with the April 2005 publication of a letter, claimed by the government to be a forgery, alleging government plans to reduce the percentage of the Ahvazi-Arab population in the province. The bombings follow similar bombings in June and October 2005.
On May 11, according to HRW, authorities executed Majid Segound and Masoud Naghi Biranvand, both of whom were age 17 at the time of their execution.
The government responded forcibly to weeks of demonstrations by members of the ethnic Azeri minority, which protested a May 19 newspaper cartoon viewed as offensive to the Azeri population. The government initially denied any protesters were killed, but on May 28 a police official acknowledged that four were killed and 43 injured in the northwestern town of Naqaba.
On July 31, student protester Akbar Mohammadi died in Evin Prison following medical complications related to a hunger strike. Police first arrested Mohammadi following his participation in July 1999 student demonstrations to protest government closure of newspapers. Authorities reportedly denied Mohammadi's parents permission to see their son's body and did not respond to calls for an independent investigation into the cause of death.
In November 2005 an appeals court ordered the case involving the death of Zahra Kazemi, a dual-national Iranian-Canadian citizen, to be reopened; however, at year's end there was no progress and the case remained under review. Kazemi, a photojournalist, was arrested for taking pictures while outside Evin Prison in Tehran during student-led protests. She died in custody in 2003 after allegedly being tortured. Authorities admitted that she died as a result of a blow to the head. In June the Kazemi family filed a civil case against the Iranian government in Canadian courts.
According to a 2005 AI report, during the previous 15 years there were reports of at least eight evangelical Christians killed in the country (see section 2.c.).
During the year there was no statement altering the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps's (IRGC) February 2005 announcement that Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 religious decree calling for the killing of author Salman Rushdie remained in effect.
There was no further action on the killing of strikers in 2004, the killings and disappearances reported by the Special Representative for Iran of the Commission on Human Rights (UNSR) in 2001, or the killings of members of religious minorities following the revolution.
b. Disappearance
Little reliable information was available regarding the number of disappearances during the year.
There were no developments in the October 2005 case of journalist Massoumeh Babapour, found barely alive after being abducted and repeatedly stabbed, after threats calling her an atheist and claiming religious authorities had sentenced her to death
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