State Murder in Iran and the US, Daily Brief January 24, 2024

For two countries practically at war with each other for decades, authorities in Iran and the US agree strongly on at least one thing. Both support the abhorrent idea that the government is allowed to commit pre-meditated murder against its citizens.

Grim new capital punishment cases in both countries prove the point.

In Iran yesterday, the state murdered two people, Mohammed Ghobadlou and Farhad Salimi.

The former, Amnesty International details, was killed because he took part in peaceful protests. The latter, another political prisoner, faced multiple charges during his more than 13 years of imprisonment, including the ludicrous “enmity against God.” (See also: “Blasphemy Is Bogus,” Daily Brief, January 9)

Iranian authorities have been ramping up executions at an alarming rate, murdering at least 746 people in 2023. Many death sentences are related to charges involving drug offenses or “intentional murder.”

It’s strange authorities should claim to disapprove so strongly of “intentional murder,” when they are doing it themselves so frequently.

In any case, they are also targeting ethnic minorities in their killing spree. At this moment, eleven people await imminent execution, and eight of those on death row are Kurdish.

Now, let’s talk about Alabama.

Tomorrow, the US state plans to tie down Kenneth Eugene Smith, strap a respirator mask to his face, and force him to inhale pure nitrogen gas until he suffocates to death. Apart from being horrific generally, this is a completely untested method of execution – no one in the US has ever been put to death like this before. This cruel experimentation sounds a lot like torture.

Thursday’s scheduled murder is not the first time the state of Alabama has attempted to kill Smith. In November 2022, Smith survived a botched execution by lethal injection, a horrifying event and Alabama’s second failed execution in less than two months.

Smith was found guilty of murder (in a case blighted by serious rights violations), so as in the Iranian murder cases, the moral absurdity is clear: the authorities claim to be opposed to murder but commit murder themselves.

The death penalty is not as frequently used in the US as in Iran. Twenty-seven of the 50 US states (as well as the federal government) have it on the books, though several have not had an execution for some time. Still, some 24 people were executed in the US last year, and while that’s far less than the hundreds in Iran, the principle is the same.

The death penalty is an attack on human dignity, is uniquely cruel in its finality, and is inevitably marked by discrimination, arbitrariness, and error. This is true whether we’re talking about Iran, the US, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Belarus, or any other place with the death penalty.

No government should be committing pre-meditated murder against its citizens. No government should have that power.