By Staff Writer
According to the 10th annual report regarding the death penalty in Iran by Iran Human Rights (IHR), in 2017 at least 517 people were executed in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is an average of at least one execution each day and more than one execution per 167,000 inhabitants. In 2017, Iran remained the country with the highest number of executions per capita.
On May 30th, IHR reported that a woman suspected of murdering her husband may be sentenced to death based solely on Qassameh. The report came from the Iranian national broadcasting website Jamejamonline’s announcement that a woman who was charged with murdering her husband on March 22, 2015, might be sentenced to death based on Qassameh.
There is no solid evidence that proves her guilt. Instead, Qassameh, which means “sworn oath”, is described as a certain number of people swearing an oath on the Quran. It is used when the judge decides that there is not enough evidence of guilt to prove the crime but still thinks it is likely that the defender is guilty. The people who swear in Qassameh are not usually direct witnesses to the crime.
Tahereh, the defendant in this case has stated, “When my husband and I got into a fight he stabbed himself in the chest and killed himself.”
However, the forensic report rejected the possibility of suicide and specified that the victim was stabbed to death by another person.
At the request of the victim’s mother, Tahereh was sentenced to Qisas (retaliation in kind) but the Supreme Court rejected the verdict. The judges then decided that Qassameh should be used in this case.
Now, the next of kin must bring 50 male relatives to the court to swear an oath that the defendant is guilty. Otherwise, the defendant must swear an oath and plead not guilty 50 times in order to have her charges dropped.
On October 30, 2017, Mojtaba Ghiasvand was executed at Rajai Shahr Prison based on Qassameh.
Qassameh appears to be a weak way to prove a crime, yet it continues to be used in the Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and criminal law. But issuing an execution verdict without evidence, because the plaintiff’s family claims the defendant is guilty, should not acceptable in a modern legal system and should be considered a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially Article 10.
