LONDON, March 30 (UPI) -- Iranian authorities in the wake of turmoil after June elections turned to capital punishment as a tool to quiet dissent, Amnesty International said.
Iran erupted in political unrest following the controversial election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term. Authorities in Iran rounded up scores of dissidents, sentencing several to death.
Amnesty International said recent developments in Iran suggest authorities are using executions as a political tool.
The rights advocate said 112 people were executed in Iran in the eight weeks that followed the June election. For 2009, at least 388 were put to death, which Amnesty International said was the largest number it recorded for Iran in recent years.
Iran under the monarchy in the 1970s used mass arrests to silence the opposition. More than 600 people, mostly former ministers and army officers, were executed by firing squad in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, meanwhile, Iranian executed as many as 5,000 people, mostly members of the dissident People's Mujahedin of Iran.
Authorities in 2009 charged several of supporters of the Iranian opposition movement with "mohabareh," a crime against God. Amnesty International said it believes there are at least nine people on death row in Iran for post-election offenses.
