The plaintiffs in the case of “serial robberies” from western Tehran homes, requested finger amputation for the five accused people, an Iranian state-run News Agency wrote.
ROKNA said the five men were being tried by the 10th Branch of the Tehran Criminal Court. The “five-member group” were accused of robbing 22 homes.
The suspects confessed to a few robberies but denied stealing from 22 homes. According to the report, the eight plaintiffs told the court that if the men were unable to return the stolen property, they would request the maximum punishment, which is finger amputation according to the laws of the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian regime regularly sentences Iranians to finger amputation for theft.
In January, a senior Iranian MP said finger amputation sentences should be issued for “petty thieves” to control crime. This is while he stressed that the reason behind the surge in robberies was inflation and Iran’s high unemployment rate.
“Unfortunately, we are witnessing an increase in robberies and petty thievery because of the severe inflation in the country and the increase in unemployment,” Seyyed Nasser Mousavi Laregani said in Parliament on January 5.
Iranians are sentenced to amputation for petty thievery while state corruption has been institutionalized in the regime with officials citing numerous cases.
An annual report by a human rights organization said eight prisoners were currently facing imminent finger amputation in Iran.
According to Amnesty International, Iranian authorities have consistently defended amputation as the best way to deter theft, expressing regret that it cannot be practiced in public and on a widespread basis without international condemnation.
According to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, between 2007 and 2017, Iranian authorities issued at least 215 amputation sentences and carried out 125 amputations, including at least six amputations in public. In a shocking statement before the UN Human Rights Council in October 2010, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of Iran’s Human Rights Council, denied that such punishments amount to torture, claiming they were “culturally and religiously justified”.
Source » irannewswire