EU/Iran — Statement on imminent executions in Iran

State­ment by HR Cather­ine Ash­ton on immi­nent exe­cu­tions in Iran Cather­ine Ash­ton, the High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Union for For­eign Affairs and Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy and Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Com­mis­sion, made the fol­low­ing state­ment today:

“I am deeply con­cerned by reports that the exe­cu­tions of Mr Moham­mad Reza Had­da­di and Ms Sakineh Moham­ma­di-Ash­tiani may be immi­nent. I call on Iran to halt these exe­cu­tions and con­vert the sen­tences, as well as that of Ms Zeynab Jalalian, a Kur­dish polit­i­cal pris­on­er sen­tenced to death for ‘mohareb’ whose case the EU already men­tioned in a pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion on 12 May.

Mr Reza Had­da­di was sen­tenced to death for a crime he alleged­ly com­mit­ted while below eigh­teen years of age. Ms Moham­ma­di-Ash­tiani faces death by ston­ing for adul­tery, a par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­el method of exe­cu­tion which amounts to tor­ture. Both these sen­tences are in clear vio­la­tion of Iran’s inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions under the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant for Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights and, in the case of Mr Had­da­di, of Iran’s oblig­a­tion under the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child. Only recent­ly Iran accept­ed, dur­ing its Uni­ver­sal Peri­od­ic Review at the UN Human Rights Coun­cil, to respect at least the min­i­mum stan­dards and the pro­vi­sions of ICCPR and CRC con­cern­ing the death penal­ty, for as long as it is maintained.

I reaf­firm the EU’s oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty under all cir­cum­stances and call on Iran to con­sid­er a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions pend­ing the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in accor­dance with UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tions 62/149 and 63/168.”

Source:
Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union