A prisoner about to be amputated by a guillotine-like device
A senior Iranian prosecutor says several cases of amputations for robbery are currently at the execution stage, and called on judges not to hesitate to issue death and amputation sentences.
The chief prosecutor of Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province, Mohammad-Hossein Doroudi, said on Thursday that the verdicts for cutting off fingers and hands of several convicts are going through the legal formalities to be carried out.
"The judiciary does not show mercy to those who break the norms of the society and disrupt the public order,” he added, noting that judges issue sentences for hand amputation and even execution in theft cases based on the constitution and the sharia law (Islamic law) regardless of foreign calls against such sentences.
Late in June, the head of the Iranian association of surgeons, Iraj Fazel, called on the judiciary not to sanction the amputation of fingers to punish thieves.
In a letter to the chief justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, Fazel called the practice "worrying and horrifying" and said it would create “a wave of hatred and disgust in the world” against the Islamic Republic.
Earlier in June, four fingers of a prisoner were cut off in Tehran’s Evin prison with a guillotine reportedly installed at the infirmary a month earlier to carry out such sentences.
According to Islamic Sharia law, punishment for theft can be amputation of fingers or hands.
Eight men convicted of theft are at imminent risk of having their fingers cut off, according to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABC) and Amnesty International.