Iranian regime hangs a group of 11 prisoners, 2,000 prisoners go on hunger strike

Iranian regime hangs a group of 11 prisoners, 2,000 prisoners go on hunger strike

Some 2,000 prisoners in Ghezel Hessar prison in the Iranian city of Karaj have staged a hunger strike since Monday, November 25, to protest execution of a group of eleven prisoners.

The hunger strike by Ghezel Hessar prisoners began on Monday when the Iranian regime's henchmen transferred 11 prisoners to solitary confinement for execution. Hundreds of the protesting prisoners are themselves on the death row.

The Iranian Resistance calls on the UN Security Council, the Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other relevant UN officials, as well as the European Union, the U.S. government, and other states to takeurgent action to end the escalating trend of arbitrary and mass executions in Iran.

On November 26, Amnesty International reported of about 600 executions since the beginning of 2013 of which 367 have taken place since Hassan Rouhani took office.

Monday evening, prison guards savagely attacked the hunger strikers, destroying prisoners’ personal properties or taking it away with them.

Subsequently, to create an atmosphere of fright and terror amongst the prisoners and to intensify suppression, they brought reinforcements and placed machine guns and sharp shooter on the towers all around the prison.

Concurrently, families of prisoners who wished to prevent implementation of barbaric execution sentences, assembled outside Ghezel Hessar prison on Monday.

In order to disperse the families, henchmen lied to them, telling them that implementation of prisoners’ death sentences have been halted. Families of prisoners also assembled in front of regime’s parliament on Tuesday to protest.

On Tuesday morning, regime’s henchmen collectively hanged eleven prisoners including a woman. The men hanged have been identified: Abdolsalam Khatooni, Reza Yazdan, Mohsen Yazdanpanah, Nasser Farahbakhsh, Hossein Karimian, Farshid Gholizadeh, Behrouz Kiani, Ehsan Mohammadpour, Mehrdad Khodayarzadeh, and Vahid Mohammad Karimi.

A female prisoner who had been transferred from Qarchak Varamin prison to Ghezel Hessar also was hanged.

Ghezel Hessar is the principal prison for inmates condemned to death. In this prison with a capacity of 8000 to 9000 prisoner, somewhere between 25000 to 27000 prisoners have been piled up with many of them on the death row. To facilitate mass hangings in this prison, the clerical regime has built stages for execution of 24 people at a time and every week secretly hangs a group of prisoners.

The executions are taking place as the P5+1 countries continue the policy of negotiation with the clerical regime ruling in Iran while being silent with regards to the barbaric violation of human rights and mass executions in Iran.

The Iranian Resistance believes this policy emboldens the clerical regime to continue with escalating the executions and calls on all human rights defenders throughout the world to stage an international campaign to stop arbitrary executions and to protest against the international silence in face of crimes against humanity by mullahs’ regime in Iran.