Iranian resistance group makes plea for Balouchi death row prisoners

An Iranian resistance group has called for the lives of three Balouchi political prisoners on death row to be spared, in a statement on Friday.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran said in the statement said the prisoners had been transferred on Thursday from solitary confinement to solitary cells to await their execution.

They are charged with the killing of the public prosecutor in the Iranian city of Zabol.

The group said however that the prisoners were “deprived of lawyer and a fair judicial process. They were condemned to death in mullahs’ sham courts.”

In the statement, the group listed what it described as “crimes of the mullahs against the deprived people of Balochistan,” including the collective hanging of 16 Balouchi political prisoners in October 2013.

“The state-run news outlets published the pictures of the victims who were cruelly hanged using cranes,” the statement read.

“The collective and clandestine execution of 15 other Balouchi prisoners on February 5 in Chahbahar’s prison and hanging the body of Ahmad Eissa Zehi, a 23-year-old prisoner who had died of a heart attack before his execution (in October 2013) are among other disclosed crimes of the mullahs against the deprived people of Balochistan.

“[The] execution of prisoners, especially the political prisoners, has increased since the assumption of office by the deceptive Mullah Rowhani,” the statement added.

Since President Hassan Rowhani, a relative moderate in Iran, took office last August, there has been a surge in executions: at least 537 people have been executed in the past eight months, nearly 200 of them since the beginning of this year, according to figures compiled by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. That compares with a total for 2013 of 624, according to data gathered by the United Nations.