Iranian authorities are preparing to chop off the fingers from the hands of three men convicted of robbery as part of their horrific punishment.
Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharfian and Mehdi Shahivand, who are being held in Urumieh Central prison, West Azerbaijan 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.
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.
The men were reportedly denied access to lawyers and courts relied on forced ‘confessions’, which saw all three get beaten, kicked and flogged.
Rostami’s hand was broken and interrogators threatened to rape Shahivand to get confessions out of them, which they have since retracted.
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.
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 has also attempted suicide several times, Amnesty said.
Iranian authorities are preparing to amputate the fingers of three prisoners convicted of theft. File image: Authorities 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
Archive image shows a blindfolded prisoner having his fingers amputated by a guillotine machine. Finger amputation is allowed under the Islamic Republic’s penal code but is widely condemned by human rights activists
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.
‘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.
In November 2024, the trio also wrote a letter describing their mental anguish and the ‘constant nightmare’ of awaiting their mutilations.
‘We have been unable to sleep or eat, anxiously awaiting the enforcement of our own sentences…This nightmare must end so that we can find a way back to life’, they wrote.
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.
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.
‘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.’
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.
It comes amid concerns over the surge in the number of executions in Iran in recent months
A man protests against executions in Iran in December 2022
Some 800 portraits displayed in Paris in 2019 to commemorate the executions of thousands of Iranian
‘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.
Hashash also warned that Iranian authorities are ‘liable to face criminal prosecution under international law’.
Finger amputations are permitted in the Islamic Republic under its Sharia law.
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.
According to the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre, Iranian authorities have amputated the fingers of at least 131 men since January 2000.
Back in October, Iranian authorities amputated fingers from the hands of two men convicted of theft.
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.
They were then transferred to hospital for medical care, the reports added.
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.
It comes amid growing concerns over the surge in the number of executions in Iran in recent months.
These included the hanging of German national of Iranian origin Jamshid Sharmahd back in October.
His family says he was abducted by Iranian forces while in the United Arab Emirates in 2020.
According to another Norway-based NGO, Iran Human Rights, Iran has executed 633 people this year alone.
Activists accuse the authorities of using capital punishment as a way of instilling fear throughout society.
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