A/HRC/22/48 images without his knowledge. He was sentenced to death on charges of “insulting and desecrating Islam”. He was allegedly held in solitary confinement and subjected to torture in Evin prison for over a year. 11. The judiciary continue to impose flogging and amputation as sentences. On 23 November, the Head of the Yazd judiciary reported the amputation in public of four fingers of two robbers. On 28 October, the judiciary in Fars announced the sentencing of a person accused of armed robbery to the amputation of his left hand and foot. 7 On 24 October, a man accused of committing adultery was publicly punished with 99 lashes, in Qaimshahr. 8 The authorities argue that flogging and amputation are sanctioned under Islamic law, are effective in deterring crime, and thus do not qualify as torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In contrast, the United Nations human rights mechanisms, in particular the Human Rights Committee considers any form of corporal punishment incompatible with article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, hereinafter, “the Covenant” (see A/HRC/13/39/Add.5). Infliction of punishments such as amputation not only leads to physical disability but may cause lifelong psychological damage. Without exception such punishment has a degrading and humiliating component, and is compounded by social stigma and diminished physical capacity over a lifetime. B. The death penalty and executions of juvenile offenders 12. The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to retain the death penalty in both law and practice. It has neither abolished the death penalty nor introduced a moratorium for crimes such as drug offences that do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes” which are the only ones to which, under international human rights law, the death penalty should be applied, in countries that have not abolished the death penalty (art. 6, para. 2, of the Covenant). In a report to the sixty-seventh session of the General Assembly (A/67/275), the Special Rapporteurs on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment endorsing the view of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions stressed that drug offences fall short of the threshold of the “most serious crimes” for which the death penalty is permissible under international human rights law (para. 57). The latter further argued that States cannot invoke national legislation or other domestically oriented reasoning to justify drug-related crimes as being “most serious crimes” (para. 59). 13. In recent years, the number of drug-related executions in the Islamic Republic of Iran has grown as part of the country’s efforts to combat drug trafficking. The introduction and entry into force of a new anti-narcotics law in January 2011 has further exacerbated the situation. The law not only provides mandatory death sentences for the head of drug gangs or networks, but introduces the death penalty for trafficking or possession of more than 30 grammes of crystal meth, like other psychedelic substances such as crack and heroin. Furthermore, drug smugglers are also deprived of the right to appeal against the death penalty (see A/HRC/21/29, para. 25, and A/66/361, para. 12). 14. Drug-related executions accounted for over 80 per cent of the over 1,000 executions reported to have been carried out from January 2011 to December 2012. These include the execution of 16 individuals in one day on 7 November 2012. Despite the aggressive campaign of drug-related executions, there is no evidence to suggest that the death penalty 7 8 See http://isna.ir/fa/news/91082314652 (in Persian) and www.mehrnews.com/fa/newsdetail.aspx?newsid=1730063 (in Persian). See www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=13910803000642 (in Persian). 5