October 30, 2020
Another four men have been condemned by a court in Urumiyeh to have their fingers amputated for thievery, bringing to seven the number so sentenced in recent months by the same court.
According to the Kurdistan Human Rights network, an appeals court has dismissed the appeals of two brothers, Shahab, 35, and Mehrdad Teymuri, 30, who were arrested in April 2019 and found guilty of a string of thefts in the Urumiyeh area.
Meanwhile, the trial court in Urumiyeh condemned Arash-Ali Akbari, 32, to amputation for multiple cases of theft.
And Kasra Karami, found guilty of theft in Urumiyeh last November, lost his appeal and was condemned, like the others, to have four fingers of his right hand amputated, the sharia sentence for four or more convictions of theft.
It isn’t clear why there is such a raft of such cases all in the Urumiyeh region.
Earlier, three other men convicted in Urumiyeh last November lost their appeals and face amputation. (See last issue of the Iran Times, page 12.)
Clerical authorities commonly say such a harsh punishment is needed to act as a deterrent to other possible thieves. But most of the punishments are not announced by the state and only leak out, which would seem to negate deterrence as the core justification.
With these latest cases, the Iran Times has reported on 68 instances of amputation that it has seen reported since 1997. But the Iran Human Rights Monitor says in the decade 2007 to 2017 it tracked 215 amputation sentences with 125 carried out.