An Iranian man was flogged in Naqadeh, northwestern Iran, early this week for “insulting” a judge. According to the Human Rights News Agency, the man, identified as Mehdi Khairi was flogged 35 times in the Sentence Implementation Unit of the Mohammadyar Public Court. He was tried in absentia by the Court in July.
An informed source said Khairi got into an argument with a judge presiding over a lawsuit he had filed.
“In the final court session, he was detained for getting into an argument. Judge Karim Haji Hatamlu filed a complaint against him,” the source said.
He was also charged with creating “disorder in court” but was acquitted later.
The flogging sentences was later upheld by an appeals court without another trial. Khairi was summoned on November 19 to the 1st Branch of the Court in Mohammadyar, where his sentence was carried out. Mehdi Khairi is a graduate of the University of Qom, south of Tehran, and holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Management.
Iran’s use of degrading punishments and torture
The Iranian regime is one of the few states that still uses degrading punishments, even though all international civil and political rights conventions have prohibited the use of inhumane punishments such as execution and flogging.
The regime regularly hands out flogging sentences to protesters, dissidents, and to those charged with adultery and theft, among other things. Flogging is a cruel and degrading punishment and is tantamount to torture.
According to Amnesty International’s Philip Luther, “The use of cruel and inhuman punishments such as flogging, amputation, and blinding are an appalling assault on human dignity and violate the absolute prohibition on torture and other degrading treatment or punishment under international law.”
“As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally obliged to forbid torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. It’s simply unacceptable that the Iranian authorities continue to allow such punishments and to justify them in the name of protecting religious morals,” he said in July 2018 in a statement condemning the lashing of a young man for drinking alcohol.
More than 100 “offenses” are punishable by flogging under Iranian law. The offenses include theft, assault, vandalism, defamation, and fraud. They also cover acts that should not be criminalized, such as adultery, intimate relationships between unmarried men and women, “breach of public morals” and consensual same-sex sexual relations.
