{"id":2867,"date":"2025-04-05T04:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T04:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/2867\/"},"modified":"2025-04-05T04:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T04:30:13","slug":"iran-prepares-mass-finger-amputation-of-thieves-in-brutal-sharia-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/2867\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran prepares mass finger amputation of ‘thieves’ in brutal sharia punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iranian authorities are preparing to chop off the fingers from the hands of three men convicted of robbery as part of their horrific punishment.<\/p>\n

Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharfian and Mehdi Shahivand, who are being held in Urumieh Central prison, West Azerbaijan<\/a> province, are waiting to undergo the ‘cruel and irreversible’ punishment of finger amputation as early as April 11, human rights organisation Amnesty International said today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All three men were arrested in August 2017 and convicted of robbery in 2019 after a ‘grossly unfair trial’, in which the court sentenced them to have four fingers on their right hands completely cut off.<\/p>\n

The men were reportedly denied access to lawyers and courts relied on forced ‘confessions’, which saw all three get beaten, kicked and flogged.<\/p>\n

Rostami’s hand was broken and interrogators threatened to rape\u00a0Shahivand to get confessions out of them, which they have since retracted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since getting the gruesome sentence, all three have gone on multiple hunger strikes in prison to protest the inhumane conditions they have been subjected to, as well as their conviction.<\/p>\n

In February 2021, Rostami was further tortured after Iranian authorities carried out a flogging sentence of 60 lashes for ‘disrupting prison order’ after he went on hunger strike. He\u00a0has also attempted suicide several times, Amnesty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Iranian <\/p>\n

Iranian authorities are preparing to amputate the fingers of three prisoners convicted of theft. File image:\u00a0Authorities carry out the court-ordered amputation of the fingers of a convicted thief in a public square in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013<\/p>\n

\"Archive <\/p>\n

Archive image shows a blindfolded prisoner having his fingers amputated\u00a0by a guillotine machine. Finger amputation is allowed under the Islamic Republic’s penal code but is widely condemned by human rights activists<\/p>\n

Following Iran’s latest threats to hack the men’s finger off, Rostami wrote a letter from prison pleading for help from the international community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I call upon human rights organisations, the United Nations, and the international community to take urgent action to prevent the implementation of this inhumane sentence’, he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In November 2024, the trio also wrote a letter describing their mental anguish and the ‘constant nightmare’ of awaiting their mutilations.<\/p>\n

‘We have been unable to sleep or eat, anxiously awaiting the enforcement of our own sentences\u2026This nightmare must end so that we can find a way back to life’, they wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The brutal punishment of finger amputation is allowed under the Islamic Republic’s penal code but is widely condemned as abhorrent and illegal by human rights activists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Sarah Hashash said in a statement today: ‘Amputation constitutes torture, which is a crime under international law and is a flagrant and abhorrent assault on human dignity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘We call on the Iranian authorities to immediately halt all plans to carry out these cruel and inhuman sentences and abolish all forms of corporal punishment in law and practice.’<\/p>\n

She also described the ‘waking nightmare’ the men have endured for nearly a decade having had to live with mental torture that the authorities could at any moment mutilate their bodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"It <\/p>\n

It comes amid concerns over the surge in the number of executions in Iran in recent months<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A man protests against executions in Iran in December 2022\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Some <\/p>\n

Some 800 portraits displayed in Paris in 2019 to commemorate the executions of thousands of Iranian<\/p>\n

‘The planned amputations, based on ‘confessions’ obtained under torture and following grossly unfair trials, are a chilling reminder of the Iranian authorities’ readiness to inflict irreversible suffering and that Iran’s judicial system is a vital cog in the machinery of torture’, she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hashash also warned that Iranian authorities are ‘liable to face criminal prosecution under international law’.<\/p>\n

Finger amputations are permitted in the Islamic Republic under its Sharia law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When such sentences are carried out, four fingers of the right hand are cut off so only the palm of the hand and thumb is left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre, Iranian authorities have amputated the fingers of at least 131 men since January 2000.<\/p>\n

Back in October, Iranian authorities\u00a0amputated fingers from the hands of two men convicted of theft.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two brothers of Kurdish origin each had four fingers on their right hands amputated by a guillotine machine at the prison in the city of Urmia in northwest Iran, according to reports.<\/p>\n

They were then transferred to hospital for medical care, the reports added.<\/p>\n

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said Shahab and Mehrdad Teimouri were initially arrested in 2019 on theft charges and sentenced to imprisonment and finger amputation.<\/p>\n

It comes amid growing concerns over the surge in the number of executions in Iran in recent months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These included the hanging of German national of Iranian origin\u00a0Jamshid Sharmahd back in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His family says he was abducted by Iranian forces while in the United Arab Emirates in 2020.<\/p>\n

According to another Norway-based NGO, Iran Human Rights, Iran has executed 633 people this year alone.<\/p>\n

Activists accuse the authorities of using capital punishment as a way of instilling fear throughout society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian authorities are preparing to chop off the fingers from the hands of three men convicted of robbery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,774,12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-2867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114283480627409040","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}