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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Iran regime hangs 3 while EU’s Mogherini is in Tehran for trade deals

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European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in Tehran.
European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in Tehran.
NCRI - Iran's fundamentalist regime on Saturday hanged three prisoners in a jail in Rasht, northern Iran, as the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is in Tehran to build greater trade ties between the EU and the regime.

The three prisoners were identified by the regime’s judiciary in Golestan Province only by their initials and ages: E. M., 29; D. A., 51; and F. V., 31.

The mullahs' regime has executed at least 17 people in the past week while European officials have been paying visits to Tehran.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on Wednesday that the increasing trend of executions “aimed at intensifying the climate of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the society, especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, demonstrates that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this medieval regime.”

Ms. Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, arrived in Tehran on Saturday along with seven EU commissioners for discussions with the regime’s officials on trade and other areas of cooperation.

Her trip was strongly criticized by Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI who said: “This trip which takes place in the midst of mass executions, brutal human rights violations and the regime's unbridled warmongering in the region tramples on the values upon which the EU has been founded and which Ms. Mogherini should be defending and propagating.”

Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 2015 period wrote: "Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at least 743 the year before."

"Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded" in the Middle East and North Africa, the human rights group said.

There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the executions as examples of “God’s commandments” and “laws of the parliament that belong to the people.”

Source: NCRI, April 16, 2016

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Location: Tehran, Tehran, Iran
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